The Power of Three

by J C Ryan

  Koh-e Shir Darwaza, Kabul, Afghanistan June 23, 3:45 a.m.

  THE SUN ROSE early here at this time of year – around 4:45. By daylight, Rex wanted to be far away from the scene of the latest body he’d hidden among the rocks. Digger had returned to the spot where he’d knocked Rex off his feet and saved him from being shot. Rex followed without saying anything. He’d figured it out. Digger was going back there to pick up the trail of the bombers and continue following it.

  Arriving at the spot, Digger had his nose almost on the ground circling the area, and less than a minute later he sat down and looked into the darkness. He glanced back at Rex as if waiting for a command.

  Rex said, “Go for it, mate.” That was the closest to what he thought Trevor would have said, sans the Aussie accent, of course.

  Digger understood and started following the trail again.

  Rex was tired, and he knew Digger would be in no better shape. He was hungry and thirsty and the same would go for Digger. If nothing else, he was going to have to find water soon, not only for himself, but for Digger. He trudged wearily along, making only a cursory attempt to stay in cover whenever he could. He’d been following for about twenty minutes when he noticed Digger had crouched low and was creeping up on something.

  Rex stopped and watched the incident unfold. Digger began backing up, still in his crawling mode. Rex hadn’t seen him do that before. The oddity of it put his senses on alert, and he looked around for somewhere to hide. Digger backed up a few yards, and then stood and headed back, straight to Rex. He took Rex’s hand in his mouth and growled softly, then led him in a direction perpendicular to the one they’d been travelling and further up the low hills.

  “What is it?” Rex asked.

  Digger didn’t answer.

  When they’d gone about a quarter-mile, Digger turned back in the original direction. He went about fifteen yards, and then went into his crouch again. Rex followed but decided there was a reason for the crouch. He lowered his own body to the ground and followed Digger’s lead. They’d gone a few more yards when Rex heard voices.

  He stopped, and Digger stopped, as well. Now Rex could make out voices and broken sentences. They were passing a pair of Taliban soldiers, but the conversation, as nearly as Rex could make out, was about the tangos looking forward to being relieved so they could get something to eat. Rex carefully turned his head as far as it would go in either direction, then soundlessly turned his body to get the rest of the 360-degree view.

  If Digger hadn’t been there, Rex might have walked straight into another ambush. He was slipping, or maybe it was because of his concussion. The dog had better instincts than he did right now, so for the time being, he’d concede the alpha position. But as soon as they were out of danger, he was going to get it back, come hell or high water. He’d been in charge of his own missions for years. He wasn’t about to let a damn dog give him orders.

  Still, he grudgingly accepted Digger’s intelligence. He’d thought Digger’s performance he’d seen in the past was all because of Trevor’s handling skills, and Digger was just a well-trained dog. Now it appeared Digger was scary-smart, and capable of operating and making correct judgement calls on his own.

  If they could just sort out who was the leader and who was the follower, Digger could be a great asset.

  A peculiar thought crossed his mind – I wonder if he thinks I’m an asset, or if he’s taking care of me because he thinks I’m not able to do it for myself?

  Nah, he decided. He was just thinking like that because of a concussion. The dog couldn’t possibly be that smart.

  Rex briefly considered shooting the two Taliban. Two less vermin to inhabit the earth. He could take them. It would be a calculated risk. He thought about it hard and decided the two remaining bombers were more important than a random couple of Taliban. Maybe he could come back and take care of them later. Maybe he could wipe out a whole nest of the vipers.

  When Digger resumed standing, Rex got up as well. That had been a close call! But now they were making better progress, once again in the direction Digger seemed to want to go.

  Rex strode along confidently, until Digger stopped and alerted to something on the ground. When Rex caught up to look at it, it was nothing but an old rag, wrapped around some rancid-smelling meat.

  “Leave it,” Rex said. Thinking if it’s unfit for human consumption, it must be unfit for canine consumption, as well.

  Digger sat down and looked at him with that accusatory expression again, then back at the meat and back at him. To Rex’s surprise, after a minute or so, Digger hadn’t pushed the issue. He got up and started off on the trail again.

  He hurried after the dog. They’d been walking for hours and miles, and it finally occurred to him that what he’d been ignoring for most of that time, his hunger and thirst, were probably bothering the dog, too. “I’m sorry, buddy. As soon as we can locate some water, I’ve got something we can eat. But choking it down without water will just make things worse. Let’s just stop and rest.”

  Digger ignored him. Rex figured either the dog didn’t understand English after all, or he had his own ideas of when to rest and when to keep going. “Digger, stop.”

  Digger stopped but didn’t turn around to look at him. Rex shrugged. So, they were still battling for alpha.

  Okay, fine, but I need a rest, and I can’t let him out of my sight.

  Rex walked up to Digger and said, “Sit.” Every dog knows that one, don’t they? To his relief and gratification, Digger sat. Rex said, “Guard”, set his watch for a fifteen-minute timer, sat down with his back against a rock and closed his eyes. It wouldn’t be enough, and he didn’t know whether Digger needed to sleep, too, but it would at least be a bit of a rest.

  When the timer went off, Rex opened his eyes. Refreshed a little, he looked where he’d last seen Digger and felt a jolt of alarm when he wasn’t there. But when he scrambled to his feet with the dog’s name on his lips, Digger rose from a few yards off and came to him.

  “Where’d you go, buddy?” he asked. Digger had nothing to say on the matter, so Rex just said, “Let’s go.”

  Digger put his nose to the ground and cast about for the trail again, then set off in the same direction as before.

  As he trudged along, Rex’s thoughts began to wander. It was a dangerous thing to allow to happen, because it was well after sunup, and Rex was still in the night-friendly dress he’d been wearing for over twelve hours now. He’d stick out like the proverbial sore thumb in the desert of the low hills they were traversing. So would Digger. Still, his fatigue and the aftereffects of shock and grief, not to mention the probable concussion, were taking their toll.

  He was remembering the grueling training CRC had put him through before sending him out on any missions. It had been a while since he’d had to draw on the endurance he’d developed, or the mind-over-matter skills that took over when his body protested it couldn’t go any further. He just had to reach for that part of his mind that said, “Oh yes, you can.”

  He was at that point now. Only the thoughts of his lost family and more recent losses of his friends kept him going. But he wondered if the dog had the same skills.

  In a belated rush of concern, he called Digger to come back to his side, but the dog ignored him and kept going.

  I guess that answers that question.

  IT WAS SHORTLY after 6:00 a.m. when Digger stopped and assumed his alert position, crouched with all four feet under him, ready to spring up and attack if so ordered. He looked quickly over his shoulder and then swiveled his head back to look at something in the near distance.

  Rex cautiously caught up to him in a running crouch, and unthinkingly put his hand on Digger’s back. A ripple of the muscles beneath his hand was the only response Digger made. He was staring at a farmhouse, about five-hundred yards away by Rex’s reckoning.

  Now it was his turn to make some decisions. The occupants of the farmhouse, for he could see by the smoke coming from the chimney that it
was occupied, could be innocents. Or they could be Taliban. It was more than a fifty-fifty chance they were Taliban, because the group dominated this area. It was full daylight, and as Rex had thought of several times before since sunup, he was in full battle dress. They couldn’t just walk up and knock on the door. They were likely to be greeted with a barrage of automatic weapon fire. On the other hand, this was where Digger led him, and he had never lied before about bad guys, to the best of Rex’s knowledge. When he picked up the trail of one or more of them, that's where he had always led him and Trevor. So, those people in the house might be Taliban, but at the very least, one of them was also a bomb maker.

  He preferred to stay low and watch the place to observe any clues for the number of occupants. They could hide and sneak to within maybe twenty yards of the house unseen; forty for sure. The vegetation was bigger at this altitude, the desert of the deforested regions giving way to scrubby forest of recent growth, with infrequent old trees too twisted by the fierce winds of the region to be of use to the timber trade that had taken ninety percent of the forests native to Afghanistan. It was plenty of camouflage, if only he was wearing the right kind of clothing to blend in. Digger, black as he was, could probably get even closer, since he was both faster and smaller.

  Rex didn’t dare take the risk until he had a better idea of how many were there, and whether there were outpost guards. He assumed there were none on this side of the house, or Digger would have detected them. But what about the sides he couldn’t see?

  He considered the odds, and the likely sequence of events. He’d been hungry and thirsty an hour before, and the dog was undoubtedly suffering from at least the lack of water. Both dogs and humans could go a long time without food, but water was a different story. Maybe it would be better to attend to those needs before he took on an unknown number of probable Taliban.

  Rex took out a monocular as his night-vision goggles were now of no use and hadn’t been for nearly two hours. He extended it to its full length and put it to his eye, scouting the area for anything that gave him an idea about either guards or the presence of water outside the house.

  Beyond and to the left of the house and what appeared to be a few yards lower on the hillside, Rex finally spotted a patch where the trees and shrubs seemed a little greener than the surrounding area. It could mean water, either a spring or stream. It could also mean the terminus of one of the thousands of cave and tunnel systems, first dug for irrigation centuries before. In the case of a spring or stream, the water would be welcome and represent less risk.

  If it meant a cave or tunnel was nearby, that could be a greater risk, as the Taliban forces had been using those for years. It could be guarded, though he hadn’t spotted any guards. It could mean another tunnel continued until it reached the house, which might be a mixed blessing. But risk or no risk, they needed water, and the need was becoming urgent.

  “Let’s go, boy,” he said to Digger. He set the example of caution by staying low himself, shielding his progress behind rocks and shrubs from the view of the house. Digger followed his lead, creeping in his best form. It took nearly an hour to make their way to the patch of green, but the reward was worth the effort. When they got close, Rex went down and told Digger to scout.

  Digger returned a few minutes later and took Rex’s hand in his mouth and started pulling him gently. Rex, just smiled, “You and I will work it out buddy, one of these days I will be speaking dog and you English.”

  Despite Digger’s reconnaissance and assurance that all was clear, Rex also carefully searched the area for hidden traps of any kind.

  Rex’s relief nearly wrung a shout of triumph from him when he felt damp ground and plants but saw no evidence of a tunnel or cave opening.

  Disappointingly, it wasn’t a stream or spring, either, but apparently a remnant of a late-melting patch of snow. In the high valley where Kabul sprawled, the temperatures had lately reached the seventies and eighties in the daytime. But Rex and Digger had climbed much higher to nearly 10,000 feet of altitude, and the nights were still cold enough to harbor patches of snow in sheltered areas.

  No matter, the dirt and underlying limestone beneath the area would have soaked up most of the snowmelt, and his survival skills included how to access it to slake their thirst, if the soil was deep enough. Digging into the soft limestone might pose a more difficult problem, with no tools. However, he began digging a hole in the damp earth, fending off Digger’s efforts to help. He needed the hole to be steep-sided, not the slope the dog’s efforts would create.

  The soil was soft, full of natural mulch, and easy to dig. Before he’d finished digging it to the dimensions he wanted, a foot and a half to two feet deep, and about half as wide, the bottom became soupy mud. That made the task even easier, and he finally sat back to consider his handiwork. In less than three minutes, the hole filled with muddy water.

  Digger didn’t seem to care whether his water was sparkling clear. When Rex didn’t put his hands back in the hole, Digger took it as an invitation to drink. He lapped at it eagerly, until he had his fill and stepped back.

  Rex waited for a few minutes for it to refill and a few more to let the dirt particles settle out as much as they would. His drink was less muddy, but still not ideal. Nevertheless, he scooped the water out with both hands and slurped it down. Mud and all, this was the best drink Rex had since his grueling CRC training days in the Arizona desert.

  With nothing to store water in, Rex figured they’d better stay right there for an impromptu picnic of the two energy bars he had in his backpack. He dug them out, unwrapped one, and held it out to Digger. The dog sniffed it once, then snatched it out of Rex’s hand quickly enough to make Rex jerk the hand back reflexively. Digger bit it in two, gulped down the half in his mouth and caught the other before it hit the ground.

  Rex suppressed a chuckle as he unwrapped his own. “This is the polite way to eat an energy bar, Digger.” He took a bite, chewed it thoroughly, swallowed, and took another bite. Digger was looking at the rest of Rex’s energy bar as if it were the finest steak. He flicked his eyes toward Rex, licked his chops, and stared again at the food. He looked so woebegone that Rex felt like a criminal, or maybe like a king who feasted while the starving serfs watched.

  Digger’s expectant expression was so moving that Rex broke the remainder of his energy bar in half, offering one piece to Digger with one hand, while he quickly shoved the other into his mouth whole. This time Digger didn’t need two bites. He swallowed the piece he had and looked at Rex’s hands for more.

  Rex chuckled softly, still mindful that the woods could be full of Taliban for all he knew. He spread his hands apart, turned them palm up and spread his fingers. “That’s it, buddy. Nothing left.”

  Digger looked at Rex’s backpack. He seemed to be saying, “I know you have something else in there. Stop holding back!” Rex wondered if he could still smell the energy bars in the backpack, even though they’d been wrapped. He smiled and opened the backpack wide to show Digger the emptiness inside.

  “You find any more in there, buddy, it’s yours.”

  Digger pushed his nose in, backed out and sat down, staring at Rex.

  “Okay, boy. Let’s get some more water to wash this down, and then we’ll see about those tangos, okay?”

  After another drink for each of them, they climbed higher. They were now behind the house from where they’d been when they first spotted it, and they settled in to wait. They had a long day ahead, during which they could do nothing but observe, try to determine the number of people in the house and who they were if possible.

  Another concern was dogs. Rex knew the common misconception was that Muslims didn’t keep dogs. To some extent it was true – some didn’t, believing dogs were unclean and not to be allowed indoors. However, the ancient breed of dog known as Afghan hound was an exception in the wealthy classes. These beautiful dogs had once been used in Afghanistan for hunting and as guardians. It wasn’t out of the question to believe th
at a high-ranking Taliban official or a drug lord, either being wealthy by the local standard, might keep one or more in his mountain stronghold.

  Once they’d gained a perch in their new hiding spot, Rex could see a road that wound up the mountainside to the little stone farmhouse, as well as a small building, which he would bet dollars to donuts was a heroin lab.

  20

  Koh-e Shir Darwaza, Kabul, Afghanistan June 23, 8:30 p.m.

  THE SUN LINGERED late on the high mountainside, long after sundown for the city far below. During the day, Rex and Digger had rested, watched the house, and once made their way cautiously to the mini-well Rex had dug earlier for more water. It kept Rex’s stomach from growling, though, now that he was not as thirsty as earlier, the muddy taste left him less satisfied than the first time. He didn’t even rate this drink against the best he’d had in his life.

  He had time to reflect that when he got back to civilization, he was going to acquire one of those carbon-filter so-called water straws that looked more like a kaleidoscope than something to drink from. At least he’d have clean water the next time he was in a similar situation. He wasn’t sure, clever as he was, if Digger could be taught to drink from that contraption , although Rex wouldn’t bet against it.

  They’d seen no cars approach or leave, and he was sure there were no dogs. They’d only seen a couple of men come out of the house, and both had gone back in after a walk around the outside. The heroin lab building appeared unoccupied. Maybe they were waiting for a new shipment of raw morphine, or maybe someone would drive up at any moment. Rex had to make a decision about approaching the house, and he couldn’t wait much longer to make it. Lack of food would catch up and render him less than fully effective eventually.

  Rex wished he and Digger could have a real conversation. Digger had led him here, so he had to assume the people inside were the tangos he was looking for. Only the slight chance they weren’t and the need for information about the next tier kept him from simply storming the house as soon as it was dark. He could do that, take them out in an overwhelming surprise attack, but then he’d have lost the opportunity for interrogation.