by Scott McEwen
Kohistani was amused by the courage of Khan’s open contempt. From time immemorial, doctors had gotten away with disrespecting authority at times when regular people simply could not. “They will soon if they do not already,” he said easily. “Do not be concerned. We Hezbis are very strong here, and the Americans will know they can’t mount a rescue mission without forcing us to kill her. We have them by the testicles this time, and we’ll be rubbing their noses in dung for many weeks to come.”
“They will cut off all supplies to the village,” the doctor warned, turning his attention back to his work.
“And then we will cut off her fingers,” Kohistani said matter-of-factly. “And then her toes . . . her hands and feet. So you see . . . they will have no other choice but to leave the village in peace . . . so long as you can keep her alive.”
Khan dipped a strip of muslin into a greenish liquid, squeezing out the excess before laying it over the wound to keep the maggots in place. “May I suggest then,” he asked, “that you use some of that influence to get some stronger antibiotics . . . and not just for her?”
“Make a list,” Kohistani said with a smile. “I will see what can be done.” He got to his feet and left the room.
Khan looked at Badira, the shape of the veil over her face telling him that she was missing most of her nose. Her eyes were beautiful, however, and he could not help smiling at her, though it was a sad kind of smile. “Whose idea was it to turn her into an opium addict?”
“Mine,” Badira said. “There was nothing else to give her.”
Khan smiled knowingly. “She’s probably going to die, you know that.”
She nodded.
“But we will do what we can for her,” he said.
They noticed that Sandra was awake now and watching them talk. Her eyes were glassy and sunken slightly in her bruised and sweating face.
“Ask her about the pain.”
“Are you in pain?” Badira asked.
Sandra nodded and closed her eyes. Badira had told her of the American assault on Waigal Village, thinking it might boost her spirits to know that her people had not forgotten about her, but the news of the near rescue had had the opposite effect, and Badira was regretting having told her, for it was clear the American woman was on the verge of giving up hope.
“I will tell the women to brew her a special tea,” Khan said. “See that she drinks it. Keep her hydrated and feed her three times a day. I will tell the women what foods to prepare.” He was about to rise, then paused. “And lie to her, Badira. Tell her that negotiations are taking place to facilitate her release. Otherwise, she won’t fight to stay alive.”
“Perhaps it’s better that she dies,” Badira ventured. “Her suffering has been terrible, and it’s likely to go on and on . . . and the Americans will come, despite what Kohistani believes . . . eventually, they will come. They always do, and when they do, many villagers will die.”
“Yes,” Khan said, getting up from the chair. “They will come, but not until they have exhausted every other option, and by then Kohistani will have achieved his goal. His plan is intelligent for his purposes. He will make the Americans play his game—make them believe there is a chance to win her release without violence. Not until after many weeks of being made into fools will they realize he has no intention of ever returning her alive. He has but one purpose: to make the Americans look weak. That will strengthen the Hezbi image all around Afghanistan and bring more fighters to their cause.”
“He shared this with you?”
Khan shook his head. “Kohistani shares his thoughts with no one. This is what I believe will happen.”
Badira was not accustomed to the company of a man who confided in her as an equal. “Where did you go to school?”
“I went to medical school in Pakistan,” he said. “I was born here in Bazarak. I returned home to care for my parents in their old age. They were both very sick at the time. After they died I thought to return to Pakistan, but in the end, I decided to stay. This was a peaceful village before the Hezbi took it over. Perhaps it will be again . . . if it is the will of Allah.”
“Perhaps,” she echoed, willing herself to ignore the strange feeling of warmth in her loins which she had never known before.
“And you?” he asked. “Where did you go to school?”
“I was also educated in Pakistan.”
Khan retook his chair. “May I ask about your nose?” he said gently. “Did you displease your husband?”
She nodded, fighting the tears that suddenly began to build behind her eyes.
“He’s dead now?”
“Yes,” she murmured, her eyes filling with tears.
“Allah be praised,” he said with a smile.
38
WASHINGTON, DC,
Starbucks Coffee Shop
Two weeks after the brutal rape of Sandra Brux had become world news, Cletus Webb walked into the coffee shop where he found Tim Hagen, the president’s military advisor, drinking a double latte and reading the Washington Post. Hagen set the paper aside and stood up to shake Webb’s hand. The two of them then found an empty corner at the back of the shop and sat down at a table.
“Since both our bosses are stuck in this mess up to their necks,” Hagen said, “I thought it might be a good idea for the two of us to meet in private.”
Webb had never met the thirty-year-old Hagen in person, but he knew the skinny little man by reputation. He had a photographic memory and had earned himself both an MBA and a PhD from MIT by the age of twenty-four. The MBA was from the Leaders for Global Operations Program. The PhD was in Aerospace Computational Engineering. Why he had chosen to work for the president was anybody’s guess, but most assumed he was drawn to the power of the office.
Webb wasn’t terribly confident there was anything to be accomplished by their meeting. “What’s on your mind?”
“As you know,” Hagen said, “the president ordered that a cordon be thrown up around the Panjshir Valley last week in an attempt to halt the flow of supplies and insurgents into Bazarak.”
“Yes, he did that against our recommendation,” Webb said, wondering if Hagen was the reason or if it was because of the Joint Chiefs. “He’s trying to be tough with them, and that’s not going to work.”
“Well, it appears you were correct,” Hagen said. He removed a small laptop computer from its case and opened it, plugged in a small set of earphones, and offered them to Webb. “NSA intercepted this video six hours ago via the internet. They’ve been reading all of Al Jazeera’s email for the better part of a year now—that’s classified, by the way—and we expect Al Jazeera to go public with it very soon.”
Webb wasn’t entirely surprised to hear it about the NSA. They had worked their way into practically every electronic nook and cranny on the planet, with China being the sole exception due to their strict controls over the internet. He put the phones into his ears and moved around to Hagen’s side of the table so no one else in the coffee shop would be able to see the screen.
“I warn you, this is graphic as hell.” Hagen pressed Play.
The first thing to appear on the screen was the terrified visage of Warrant Officer Sandra Brux. The shot pulled back to reveal that she was once again tied completely naked to a bed.
“Please don’t do this,” she said, begging someone off camera.
The shot panned around to show a smiling Aasif Kohistani sitting in a chair. “Greetings,” he said in English, “and may the blessings of Allah be upon you. American military forces have surrounded the Panjshir Valley, cutting us off from the outside world in an attempt to starve our women and children. This will not be tolerated.” He signaled the cameraman to train the camera on Sandra.
Kohistani spoke to her off camera. “Sandra, tell your president what you want him to do.”
Sandra was sobbing with fear and shame, unable to look at the lens as she spoke. “I want him to pull our troops back.”
“Why?”
“Because
if he doesn’t, you’re—” She began to weep.
“Tell him!” Kohistani snapped.
“Because you’re going to cut off my fingers and toes.”
“And then what?”
“My feet and hands,” she said, sobbing even harder.
Kohistani said something in Pashto, and Ramesh stepped into the shot holding what looked like a pair of aviation snips. He took hold of Sandra’s left wrist.
“No!” Sandra screamed, fighting in vain against the leather straps they had used to secure her to the wooden frame of the bed. She balled her hand into a tight fist, but Ramesh easily pried her ring finger free and cut it off with the sheet-metal cutters. She shrieked in pain and horror as the blood began to gush from the stump of the knuckle.
Ramesh cut her hand loose from the strap and held it up to the camera so that it was plain to see the amputation had been not faked. He held up the severed finger in his other hand.
Sandra jerked her hand from his grasp and put the knuckle into her mouth, attempting to stanch the blood. A moment later, she turned to lean over the edge of the bed and began to vomit. The camera swung back around to Kohistani. He was no longer smiling.
“You did this, Mr. President, you and no one else! Pull your troops back, or every day this village remains surrounded, your woman will lose a finger. Do not attempt a rescue, or she will be killed instantly. You will wait patiently for our demands—or she will die!”
The shot then swung back around to show Sandra lying on the bed sobbing with her fist balled up tight against her breast, blood covering her chest and belly. The video came to an end and froze.
Hagen closed the laptop.
Webb plucked the earphones from his ears and moved back around to his side of the table, visibly shaken. “Has the president seen this?”
“Yes,” Hagen said. “He’s called a meeting for this afternoon with your boss and the Joint Chiefs.”
“He’s looking for advice?”
Hagen shook his head. “He’s already ordered our troops pulled completely away from the Panjshir Valley. The meeting is to ensure that no one inside of SOG acts without orders this time. He doesn’t want anyone to do anything to put Warrant Officer Brux into any greater danger than she’s already in.”
“Okay,” Webb said. “So what do you want from me? Shroyer isn’t going to have any trouble going along with that program.”
“I realize that,” Hagen said. “What I was hoping was that the two of us might be able to continue looking at the bigger picture.”
A shadow crossed Webb’s brow. “What bigger picture?”
“Well, it’s obvious what the HIK is looking to achieve here,” Hagen said. “They’re using Sandra to make the US look weak—and it’s going to work.”
“Of course they are,” Webb said, hunching his shoulders and letting them fall. “Have you told the president that?”
“Certainly, I’ve told him,” Hagen replied, “but . . . well . . . this has to stay between the two of us.”
“Okay.”
“The president’s having a very human reaction to this crisis. You might even say it’s traumatized him . . . he’s afraid it’s going to cost him the presidency.”
Webb sat back in the chair. “You call that a human reaction?”
Hagen seemed not to have heard him. “He’s been okay the past couple of weeks. The uproar over the rape video was pretty rough on him, but after he went on television to report that we’d captured the Taliban rapist, things began to settle down. This video, however, is going to have an even deeper impact than the first, and there’s virtually no way for us to get out in front of it. The president ordered that valley surrounded, and Sandra has been mutilated as a direct result of that order . . . at least that’s how the people are going to see it.”
“I’m sorry,” Webb said, now thinking Hagen must be some kind of a cold-blooded reptile, “but I don’t see how any of this involves you and me in any sort of private manner. This crisis is going to be handled at a higher pay grade than yours or mine.”
“I agree,” Hagen said, taking a drink from his latte. “But the president needs to change his thinking, and I can only influence him so far. If you can influence Shroyer to offer him the same advice that I’m offering him, we might be able to change his mind. I’m not kidding myself about our chances, but it’s worth a try.”
Webb was hard-pressed to hide his irritation. “What advice?”
“Full-scale assault into the Panjshir Valley. This is the perfect opportunity for us to annihilate hundreds of HIK fighters. They’ve made a grave tactical error in their reach for a strategic advantage here.”
“Yeah, well, Sandra’s presence in that valley fairly well trumps the error.”
“Only if we allow it to,” Hagen said, pressing hard now. “You have to think about this mathematically, Cletus. Sandra’s dead anyway. You know it, I know it—hell, even she knows it! Why let it be a total loss? If she has to die, why not let it be during a rescue attempt? And why not use that rescue attempt as an excuse to wipe out as many of the enemy as we possibly can? These are the crazy lunatics who are likely to take over Afghanistan after we leave. We can’t allow our humanity to cause us to lose sight of the bigger picture here.”
“What the hell is this bigger picture you keep talking about?”
“It’s very simple,” Hagen said. “If we smash that valley flat—along with everyone and everything in it—this will be the last time we ever have to worry about these crazy people using one of our women to humiliate the United States.”
39
AFGHANISTAN,
Jalalabad Air Base
The mood around the base was pretty somber. News of Sandra’s finger amputation and the subsequent troop pullout from the Panjshir Valley had been a double whammy to most everyone’s moral. At least with Bazarak surrounded they had felt like something was being done for Sandra. Now, though, the overwhelming feeling was that she had been left behind, and that didn’t sit well with any of the American forces based in the Afghan Theater of Operations, much less her fellow Night Stalker pilots, the Army Rangers, and Navy SEALs—a number of whom had risked lengthy prison terms in the unauthorized rescue attempt.
There was little or no talk about another unauthorized mission. What little talk there was was nothing more than blowing off steam, and none of it took place in front of the officer corps. The president himself had made it very clear through General Couture that any unauthorized action of any kind would be punished to the full extent of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, and no one wanted to risk being charged with entering into the planning stages of such a mission.
Opinions of the president’s decision to pull out of the valley were equally divided. Half the troops in the ATO at least sympathized with the president for wanting to spare Sandra any additional torture. The other half, however, were busy putting themselves in Sandra’s shoes, boasting that it would be better to die on American terms than it would be to die at the whim of a lunatic Muslim cleric. They wanted to attack right now with every available fighting man and wipe the village of Bazarak clean off the map.
Newly released from the hospital, Captain Crosswhite limped into the ready room in the hangar where Gil, Steelyard, and a number of other SEALs—many of whom had taken part in Bank Heist—were sitting around smoking cigarettes and nipping from a pair of illegal whiskey flasks.
Gil flicked the butt of his cigarette into a dented steel trash can and grinned. “I expected you to be on a plane back to Kandahar by now.”
“Shit,” Crosswhite said, reaching to take a cigarette away from a very junior SEAL sitting near the wall. “They don’t want me back down there.” He took a long drag from the smoke and gave it back. “I’m persona non grata. Soon to be dishonorably discharged—or worse.” He winked at Steelyard. “Like my buddy over there.”
Steelyard chuckled. “If I was ten years younger, I’d be humping the Panjshir Valley as we speak. As I am, I wouldn’t do anybody any goo
d. Sucks getting old, boys—remember I told you that.”
There were a number of dutiful chuckles.
Crosswhite took a seat and reached for the flask.
“That a good idea for you right now?” Gil asked.
“Hell, no.” Crosswhite tipped the flask. “Thanks, I needed that. I just got cornered outside the hospital by John Brux. He said he flew in here to thank me for trying to rescue his wife. I told him he didn’t have to thank me for a fuckin’ thing. I asked him if he wanted to walk over here with me to thank the rest of you Bank Heist boys, but he asked me to do it for him. He’s pretty down at the moment. I guess nobody gave him the news about Sandra’s finger until a few hours ago. He says nobody wanted to be the one to tell him.”
“Jesus, can you blame them?” Alpha said.
Crosswhite’s face lit up, noticing Alpha for the first time. “Hey, Leper! Your pecker drop off yet?”
The room broke up in laughter and Alpha jumped up, turning in a circle to give them all the finger with both hands. “Right here, motherfuckers!” He grabbed his package. “None of you fucking pussies would have acted any different.”
Even Gil was having trouble suppressing a smile. He caught a glimpse of Forogh signaling to him from outside the ready room and slipped quietly out into the hangar as the jokes about Alpha’s Bank Heist meltdown began to fly.
“What’s up?” Gil asked guardedly, expecting Forogh to level more complaints about the interrogation.
“I need to talk to you,” the interpreter said. “Alone.”
“Look, Forogh, if it’s about the interrogation—”
“No, it’s not about that,” Forogh said in a hushed voice.
“All right, come on.” Gil led him out behind the hangar, where the two of them climbed up into the back of a deuce-and-a-half truck.
“Okay, what’s eating you?”
Forogh stared at him, as if taking a final moment to make sure of himself. “I have family in Bazarak.”
Gil felt his skin turn to gooseflesh. “How much family—a lot?”
