by Tom Clancy
So it was the middle of the night in a small town deep in the desert of southern Afghanistan, and I was chasing a teenaged girl carrying a pistol through a terrorist’s house. If I started a conversation like that, would you believe me? I wouldn’t believe me.
Hila ran all the way down the hall, made an abrupt right-hand turn, and when I followed, I found her stopped dead, raising her pistol at another man coming toward us.
She shot him right in the heart. As he fell, she ran past him, down another hall with doors lining both sides. I was indeed crazy. I’d turned the girl into a cold-blooded killer; then again, maybe Zahed was responsible for that.
As we ran I couldn’t help but realize this wasn’t a house but a mansion, perhaps the biggest place in the entire town, although you wouldn’t know it when looking on Sangsar from above. The buildings were so closely situated that it was hard to tell where one ended and the other began. The doors here were ornate as well, heavy oak, deeply carved. The fat man had spared no expense.
Hila reached a door at the end, pushed through it, and ran inside.
I called after her, reached the doorway, turned into the room, and found her at the far end, running toward a window, a real window, which was rare to find.
We were in a massive bedroom with a four-poster bed, heavy furniture, and yet another flat-screen TV. It was like a room in a five-star hotel that had been built in a neighborhood of utter squalor. Very surreal. I’m sure parts of the village didn’t have electricity, but Zahed sure did; either that or he ran his TV off a generator.
I rushed to the window to find Hila pointing. “There!” she cried. “There!”
Across a long, tree-lined courtyard, past fig trees and a wall covered in rose bushes, were the silhouettes of three men standing near a wrought-iron gate.
One of them had to be the fat man. He was tall, six feet five at least, and huge, more than four hundred pounds, I guessed.
Stacks of luggage were lined on the walkway beside them. They were waiting to be picked up.
Damn it. I tried the window. Locked. I couldn’t find a way to open it! I turned back—
And when I did, a man was standing in the door with his AK pointed at us. “What’re you doing?” he asked in Pashto.
I shifted in front of Hila but didn’t raise my rifle. “The infidels come from the basement,” I tried to say.
The man took a step forward and frowned. Aw, no. I must’ve made a mistake. Maybe I’d told him his mother was a whore, I wasn’t sure.
Before I could react, another man jogged up beside the first and began screaming and tugging at his buddy.
I stole a look out the window.
A car had rolled up outside.
The first guy shouted at me again. I threw myself to one side, raised my rifle, and fired a salvo into him and his buddy, no silencer, just me and the AK dishing out lead loud and clear. Both went down, but the first guy had started firing—
And Hila let out a scream.
As both men fell, I clambered up, shouldered my rifle, and rushed to Hila, who’d fallen onto her back and was clutching her side. I immediately pulled away her shirt and saw that a round had pierced the right side of her abdomen, no exit wound.
I chanced another look out the window. The wrought-iron gate was open. The three men were fighting over something, their voices raised as they rushed to get in the car while two others hurried to load the luggage.
“This hurts,” said Hila. “Please. Can you help?”
“It’s not that bad. You’ll be okay.”
She clutched my hand. “Please. I need help.”
“But I need to go,” I told her. “He’s outside. He’s going to get away . . .”
She grabbed my hand even tighter as tears welled in her eyes.
TWENTY-NINE
I’d thought Hila would beg me to stay with her, but she narrowed her gaze and said, “Okay. Get him. Then come back to help me.”
“I will.”
“Okay.”
I understood now. She had wanted to die, but ironically the gunshot now gave her the will to live. I dragged her behind the bed, out of view from the doorway, and then I grabbed the pistol I’d given her, tucked it into my waistband, and bolted to my feet. I seized a pillow from the four-poster bed, then braced the pillow in front of my face. With a running start, I launched into the air and let out a string of curses as I crashed through the window and landed in a shower of glass on the dirt below.
The three figures ran toward the car now, a black Mercedes, probably fitted with bulletproof glass. I came rolling up with the pistol in my hand and shot the two guys loading luggage.
The driver opened his door and raised a pistol. I shot him, and then, as I sprinted toward the gate, I got my first clear look at the men:
Bronco.
His Asian buddy “Mike.”
And the fat man himself, decked out in silk robes and clean turban and with a beard that splayed across his chest. He wore big gold and diamond rings, and when he faced me, he frowned for a second as both Bronco and Mike reached down to draw weapons.
“Unh-uh,” I said, tugging down my shemagh.
“Aw, Joe, I can’t believe you’re this stupid,” said Bronco, slowly raising his palms now. “Didn’t you get your new OPORDER? We got you pulled off this job. Finally . . .”
“You’re bluffing. I got nothing.”
Zahed eyes narrowed in fury, and he turned to Bronco and began screaming. I didn’t catch very much, but he’d said something about Bronco being the fool.
All three of them backed toward the car.
“Don’t move,” I warned them.
“We have to leave,” said Mike. “You have no idea how important this is or the extent of this operation.”
I craned my head at the sound of multiple helicopter engines echoing off the mountains. We couldn’t see them yet, but they were coming . . . and more gunfire echoed from the hills. Harruck had committed some forces all right, and I wondered if the Predator controller had finally been granted permission to unleash his bombs.
“Tell Zahed I’m taking him into custody,” I told Bronco.
The old spook shook his head. “Joe, you’re wasting your time. If you take him in, I’ll get him released—all because your people haven’t even contacted you yet. What a joke.”
I raised my pistol even higher and began to lose my breath. Bronco was right. It was all just a game. I could bring in Zahed, and yes, they probably would get him released. Nothing would change.
The satellite phone tucked into my back pocket began to ring.
“So I guess you know the rest,” I tell Blaisdell, as she scrutinizes me with those lawyer eyes flashing above the rim of her glasses.
She glances down at my report. “Yes, it’s all here.” She sighs. “I don’t want you to have any unreasonable hope. You admitted what you did right here. In addition to the obvious charge, they’re going for dereliction of duty . . . failure to keep yourself fully apprised of a fluid tactical situation . . . conduct unbecoming an officer.”
“What was I supposed to do? Lie? I’ve done enough of that already. And there were witnesses.”
“Let me ask you. Do you think what you did solved anything?”
I take a deep breath and look away. “I don’t know. I just don’t know.”
“The report tells me what you did. It doesn’t say how you feel about it.”
“How do you think I feel? Ready for a party? Why does that even matter?”
“Because I’m trying to see what kind of an emotional appeal I can make. Unless somebody decides to take a huge risk, to go out on a limb for you, then like I said, I don’t want you to have any unreasonable hope at this point.”
“Unreasonable hope? Jesus Christ, what do you people expect from me?”
“Captain. Calm down. I’m still recording, and I’d like you to go back and finish the story. If there’s anything you might’ve left out of the report, anything else you can remember that you think mi
ght help, you have to tell me right now . . .”
I served with a guy named Foyte, a good captain who wound up getting killed in the Philippines. I was his team sergeant, and he used to give me all kinds of advice about leadership. He was a really smart guy, best-read guy I’d ever met. He could rattle off quotes he’d memorized about war and politics. He always had something good to say. When he talked, we listened. One thing he told me stuck: If you live by your decisions, then you have decided to really live.
So as I stood there, staring into the smug faces of the two Central Intelligence Assholes, and looking at Mullah Mohammed Zahed, a bloated bastard who figured that in a few seconds I’d surrender to the futility of war, I thought of Beasley and Nolan; of my father’s funeral; and of all the little girls we’d just freed in the tunnel. I thought of Hila, lying there, bleeding, waiting for me, the only person she had left in the world. And I imagined all the other people who would be infected by Zahed’s touch, by the poison he would continue to spread throughout the country, even as one of our own agencies supported him because they couldn’t see that the cure was worse than the poison.
How did I feel about that?
I desperately loved my country and my job. If I just turned my back on the situation because I was “little people,” then I was no better than them.
Lights from the first helicopter panned across the village wall behind us, the whomping now louder, the reactionary gunfire lifting up from the ground.
My satellite phone kept ringing. I figured it was Brown or Ramirez, so I ignored it.
A roar came from the troops somewhere out there, and a half dozen RPGs screamed up toward the chopper, whose pilot banked suddenly away from the incoming.
Zahed began to smile. Even his teeth had been whitened. The CIA had pampered his ass, all right.
Bronco was about to say something. Mike had his gaze on the helicopter.
The trigger came down more easily than I had anticipated, and my round struck Zahed in the forehead, slightly off center. His head snapped back and he crashed back into the Mercedes and slid down to the ground, the blood spray glistening across the car’s roof.
Bronco and Mike reacted instantly, drawing their weapons.
I shot Bronco first, then Mike.
But I didn’t kill them. I shot them in the legs, knocking them off their feet as I whirled and sprinted back toward the shattered window. My phone had stopped ringing.
“You’re going down for this, Joe! You have no idea what you’ve done! No idea!”
There was a lot of cursing involved—by both of us—but suffice it to say I ignored them and climbed back into the bedroom, where Hila lay motionless.
I was panting, shaking her hands, gently moving her head. I panicked, checked her neck for a carotid pulse. Thank God. She was alive but unconscious. I dug the Cross-Com out of my pocket, activated it, changed the magazine on my pistol. I gently scooped up Hila, slid her over my shoulder, then started out of the room, my gun hand trembling.
“Predator Control, this is Ghost Lead, over.”
A box opened in my HUD. “Where you been, Ghost Lead?”
“Busy.”
“CAS units moving into your area, over.”
“Got ’em. Can you lock onto my location?
“I’ve got it.”
“Good. I need Hellfires right on my head. Everything you got. There are no civilians here. I repeat, no civilians. We got a weapons and opium cache in the basement. I want it taken out, over.”
“Roger that, Ghost Lead. I still have no authorization for fires at this time, over.”
“I understand, buddy. Tell you what. Give me ten minutes, and then you make your decision—and live by it . . .”
“Roger that, Ghost Lead.”
With a few hundred Taliban fighters to defend the village, I had a bad feeling that they’d manage to either move or simply secure all those weapons and opium. Better to take the cache out of the picture—blow it all back to Allah. I wasn’t sure how committed Harruck’s Close Air Support was, either.
I had considered for the better part of two seconds taking Hila straight outside and trying to link up with one of the choppers, but the place still swarmed with Taliban. I’d rather take them out one or two at a time in the tunnels. So I carried her back to the basement and descended the stairs.
“Ghost Lead, this is Predator Control. I’ve just received an override order. I have clearance to fire. But I will lose the target in four minutes, fifteen seconds, over.”
“Let the clock tick,” I told him. “But don’t miss your shot. I’m getting the hell out of here.”
“Roger that, Ghost Lead. Godspeed.”
I nearly fell down the staircase near the bottom, caught my balance, then turned toward the tunnel at the far end. Judging from the sounds above, most of the Taliban were engaging the choppers or putting fire on the mountainside. I didn’t expect to encounter much resistance in the tunnel, so when I cleared the rock section and ducked a bit lower to enter the drainage pipe, I froze at the sound of voices.
I doused the penlight in my other hand.
Flashlights shone ahead. I set Hila down. I flicked the penlight back on.
Oh, no. There was a long line of guys, maybe twenty, maybe more, coming right at us.
I saw them.
They saw me.
They screamed.
I reached into my web gear and produced a grenade.
They screamed again.
I pulled the pin and pitched the grenade far down the pipe, then threw myself over Hila as three, two—
My satellite phone started ringing again.
One.
I cupped my ears as the grenade went off with a blinding flash and rush of air, as the men shrieked now, and I suddenly rose, damning my ringing phone to hell, and unleashed salvo after salvo through the smoke and gleaming debris.
Then I screamed ahead, told them to run away or die, I think. Something pretty close.
The pipe grew very quiet, save for my ringing phone. I cursed, pulled it from my pocket, and realized it’d been General Keating on the line.
Aw, damn. I’d get with the old man later. I switched off the phone, picked up Hila, and eased my way forward as far ahead, footfalls sounded, though no flashlights lifted my way. I neared the area of the explosion, saw how the concrete had been blasted apart, then realized the earth above had nothing to support it. Below were a half dozen men shredded into bloody heaps.
I reached up with my finger to check the stability of the ceiling, and that was when the entire section of earth came down on top of me. It all happened so fast that I didn’t realize how much dirt had fallen until I tried to move my legs. Trapped. I managed to bring up one arm and brush it from my face. I spit dirt, then glanced up . . . and there it was about a meter above, an open hole and the stars beyond. The gunfire popped and cracked, and two mortars exploded somewhere beyond.
I started writhing back and forth, trying to free myself, when I heard more voices. I wasn’t sure which side of the tunnel they were coming from. I began to panic, shoving my arm more violently and trying to kick. The earth to my right began to give away, and suddenly I fell sideways and out of the pile, sliding down a hill of dirt that was spreading to Hila.
“Ghost Lead, this is Predator Control. Thirty seconds, and you are still too close to the drop zone, over.”
“Roger that,” I said, then coughed. “I’m moving out. You just do your job!”
“Mitchell, this is Keating,” called the general as another video box opened in my HUD. “I’ve been trying to get a hold of you, son! Your orders have changed!”
So I ripped the Cross-com off my head and turned it off. It was a little late for that shit.
The passage through the pipe was completely blocked. I thought if I could get us up on top of the pile, I might be able to push Hila through the hole and up top.
But I had no idea what we’d find up there. I needed to chance a look for myself. I climbed back up, pushing
back into the dirt, and up through the hole until my head jutted out. I was facing the mountainside, muzzle flashes dancing across the ridgelines. I turned around to face the village and saw at least forty Taliban fighters racing directly toward me running behind a pair of pickup trucks with fifty-calibers mounted on the back, the guns spewing rounds.
But then, from somewhere behind me came the hiss of rockets, and just as I turned my head, I saw an Apache roar overhead and the pickup trucks explode in great fireballs not thirty meters from my head.
I ducked back into the hole. The Predator controller was about to drop his bombs. I hustled down and grabbed Hila. I moved her higher across the dirt mound and toward our escape hole. I shifted around to try to shield her from the blast, then took two long breaths and listened for the first impact.
THIRTY
I tucked in as tightly as I could, and the next few seconds felt like a lifetime.
For a moment, I thought the controller had changed his mind or been ordered to abort.
But then, just as my doubts were beginning to take root, twin detonations, somewhat muffled at first, originated from behind us, well off into the basement. Not three heartbeats later came a roar unlike anything I’d ever heard, followed by a massive tremor ripping through the ground.
As the earthquake continued, a wave of intense heat pushed through the tunnel behind me, and I gasped and started dragging Hila higher toward the hole, fearing that all the air would be consumed before we escaped. That I moved farther up was the only thing that saved us from a wave of fire that rushed through the pipe. I kept groaning and dragging her higher, my boots slipping on the dirt, as dozens of smaller explosions began to boom, and I knew that was all the ammunition beginning to cook off. Then came a horrible stench as the opium began to burn. My eyes filled with tears, and for a few seconds I thought I’d pass out before someone grabbed my arm and began pulling me up.
There was screaming, but I couldn’t identify anyone above the cracking and booming from below, as well as more booming from the village as I was suddenly hoisted out of the hole and plopped down in the sand.
