Blue Warrior (12 page)

“Military?” Pearce asked.

“Malian army. I can see the flag.”

Judy shook her head. Gave Pearce the stink eye. “Yup. Easy as pie.”

“Repeat that, Juliette?”

“Never mind,” Judy said.

“You’re in contact with Mike-Mike, correct?” Pearce asked. Margaret Myers’s code name, not to be confused with Mike Early, code name Echo.

“Correct.”

“Have her communicate with her intel source. Echo’s got to be there on time or we’re all dead.”

“Roger that, Papa. One more thing. Intel source now has a name. ‘Female, unknown’ has been identified as Cella Paolini. Mike-Mike thought you might know her. Take care, you two.” Ian logged off.

“What?” Pearce shook his head, dope-slapped.

Judy caught Pearce’s stunned expression. “Who’s Cella Paolini?”

“She’s my
wife.”

18

Afghanistan–Pakistan border

6 January

T
roy Pearce scanned the village down below him through his binoculars. He was perched five hundred meters higher up on the mountain in the snow-covered trees, looking down, half hidden by a fallen log. The village was a poor excuse for human habitation, even by Afghan standards. A squalid collection of mud-brick buildings with pens attached for goats and chicken coops. A small boy, naked from the waist down, peed against the wall of his house, steam rising from the piss. The Pakistan border was just five klicks away.

“Wyoming is just like here?” Daud whispered. A bright, incredulous smile poked out of the thick, woolly beard of the twenty-five-year-old Afghani. His dark eyes sparkled beneath his dark brown
pakol
, a flat woolen cap with a thick round bottom made famous by the
mujahideen
martyr Ahmed Shah Masood. Daud popped another piece of snow into his mouth to keep his breath cold so as not to make a vapor.

“Maybe not as many Pashtuns, but yeah, where I come from is a lot like here. Pine trees, too. Here.” Pearce handed his friend the binoculars. The Afghani’s trusted AK-47 was slung across his back.

“I should like to visit Wyoming someday.”

“My grandfather built a cabin near the Snake River. I’m going to fix it up if I ever make it back there.”

“If? Don’t speak like that, my friend.”

“
Inshallah
, then. And you’re more than welcome to come.”

“
Inshallah?
You are Muslim now?” Daud’s smile was infectious. He handed Pearce back the binoculars.

“Not exactly.”

“If I came to the States, I would finish my engineering degree. America has the best engineering schools. Everyone knows this.”

“What kind of engineering?”

“Civil. My country needs more roads and bridges if it is going to develop properly.”

I admire your enthusiasm, Pearce thought to himself. You’re going to need a helluva lot more than roads and bridges to drag this dump into the twenty-first century.

“I have an uncle in Texas. Perhaps a school there.”

Pearce shook his head. “Stanford is the ticket.”

“It is difficult to enter, yes?”

“Maybe I can pull some strings for you there.” Like someone once did for me, he thought. Changed his life. Without Stanford, he wouldn’t be here.

“You like to fish, Daud?”

“I don’t know. I have never fished.”

“What? How is that even possible?” Pearce took a rod and reel with him everywhere he could.

“We eat goats around here, mostly. They cannot swim.”

Pearce scanned the village again, then the thick trees around it. “You think Khalid’s still coming?”

“Where else would he go? His wives are here and it is cold, is it not, and nearly night?”

Pearce nodded. He and Daud had led a small band of fighters to observe the village below on a rumor that the local chieftain, Asadullah Khalid, a Taliban commander, was returning from Pakistan today with a load of RPGs, traded for heroin bricks cultivated in the valley. Their goal was to capture him, but failing that, he was authorized to
terminate the bastard. The trick for Pearce would be to keep Daud from killing him first.

The wind gusted. Pearce shivered despite the government-issue polypropylene thermals beneath his eclectic mix of local garb. Daud was clad in little more than woolen pants, a Canadian army surplus sweater, and a knitted scarf, but after six hours out here in the snow it was Pearce’s teeth that were chattering. He never ceased to admire the endurance of these mountain villagers.

Daud’s village was ten kilometers away. He was the son of the village chief and had studied English and engineering in Peshawar. He volunteered as a translator with the U.S. government, which is how Pearce found out about him. Daud’s village hated the Taliban almost as much as they hated Khalid’s village. It was easy enough for Pearce to recruit Daud and his men into the CIA’s war on the Taliban in this part of the country. He’d been embedded with them for the last two weeks.

“Why do your people hate the people in this village so much?” Pearce asked in bad Pashto.

Daud spit. “They are worse than
kafir
s, with no honor or loyalty except to themselves. In the last war they made alliances with the Russian pigs. Two of my uncles were killed by the Russians, and other men, too, and our women raped because of those dogs.”

“And now the Taliban,” Pearce added.

“And the Devil, too.” Daud spit again.

A branch cracked behind them. Both men whipped around.

“Ahmed!” Daud whispered loudly.

Nothing.

Daud raised his AK-47 in the direction of the sound. “Ahmed!”

“What?” a voice whispered back.

Thump.

A grenade landed in the snow at Pearce’s feet.

Daud shoved Pearce backward over the log. Troy tumbled ass-over-teakettle with a yelp, and on his first rotation caught a glimpse of Daud tossing something back up the hill. Automatic-rifle fire split the air
above. Pearce spread his arms wide to slow his roll, then dug his boot toes into the snow on the next tumble. He was facedown in the powder when he heard the
whoomph
of the grenade explosion. He leaped to his feet, snapping the M4 butt stock against his cheek and aiming at the tree line. Caught a glimpse of Daud racing straight up the hill and dashing into the pines.

Pearce called after him. Stupid, he knew.

“DAUD!”

Savage cries and more gunfire. Pearce’s brain registered AKs, for sure. But also the high snapping crack of HKs. Strange.

One of Daud’s men, Hamid, dashed parallel across the ridgeline, firing his weapon above where Daud had entered the trees. Pearce charged up the mountain, legs burning with every step, like hundred-pound weights were clamped on his boots. A burst of bullets chopped the snow around him. He wheeled to the right and put three rounds in the chest of black-turbaned fighter. The man’s mouth opened in a silent cry as he toppled backward, rifle flying through the air.

Pearce turned back uphill and stormed toward Daud’s position in the trees. It felt like sprinting in molasses. He finally reached the trees. Hamid was there, kneeling down, Daud grimacing and holding his bleeding thigh with both hands, blood pooling in the snow.

Pearce broke open a med kit. Hamid ripped open Daud’s trouser leg and wrapped his weathered hands around the thigh above the wound to stanch the bleed. The wiry Afghan was the same age as Pearce, but with his milky left eye and leathery skin, Hamid appeared to be ten years older, maybe more.

“You looked very funny falling over that log,” Daud said through gritted teeth.

“Idiot,” Pearce said, quickly examining the wound. “You’re lucky it went clean through. Missed the bone.” But Troy wasn’t sure the artery wasn’t nicked. He was bleeding fast.

“You should see the other guy.” Daud grimaced. “Not so lucky.”

Hamid jabbered in Pashto as Pearce dumped QuikClot into both the entry and exit points of the wound, then quickly wrapped the
double-padded “Israeli bandage” around Daud’s thigh and secured it tightly on the pressure applicator clip.

“Hamid says the cowards ran away but we lost Ahmed. Ahhh! It burns!”

“That’s the QuikClot. Good news, you’ll stop bleeding. Bad news, you’ll never be a lingerie model.”

“Don’t forget Ahmed. His father . . .” But Daud passed out.

Rage and despair overwhelmed Pearce. His first solo mission in country and it had gone to shit.

“Let’s get him out of here,” Pearce said to Hamid, not bothering to use his broken Pashto.

Hamid didn’t speak a word of English but understood Pearce perfectly. He clapped Pearce on the shoulder with a leathery hand. “It has already been written.”

Pearce hoped that wasn’t true. He wanted to write Khalid’s last chapter himself, in the bastard’s own blood.

19

Afghanistan–Pakistan border

6 January

H
amid and three other fighters held the corners of the heavy woolen blanket that carried Daud like a stretcher. Pearce was on point, but his night-vision goggles were useless. The moon had fled and the stars had turned to falling snow. The infrared scope on his rifle lit the way.

Pearce first led them farther down the hill, then back around and higher up, suspecting an ambush. He was right. Pearce took out two of Khalid’s men with single shots to the head before they knew what hit them. When the other bad guys opened up in the night, their flashing barrels made them targets, and Daud’s men took out two more with Pearce providing covering fire. The air rang with automatic-rifle fire, muzzle flashes sparking between the trees like strobe lights. Then it stopped. The black night returned, and the sound was swallowed up in the gauze of thick, wet flakes blanketing the mountain.

Pearce kicked the bodies over and flashed a light in their faces, giving Hamid a clear look. Hamid nodded with recognition at each face, spitting heavily in the snow at the last.

“Khalid?” Pearce asked.

Hamid shook his head no. The other fighters rifled through the pockets of the dead men. They pulled out wadded rupee notes, cigarettes, stale rounds of naan. No contraband.

Pearce went back on point. Hamid and the others followed silently behind at a distance, carrying their precious cargo through the frigid air.

—

P
earce trudged ahead, exhausted. A headache raged. Hours of concentration and physical exertion had taken their toll. No matter. He had to push on. There was still another kilometer to the village, maybe more. He checked his watch. It was just past two a.m. on the illuminated dial. He heard the rush of feet tramping in snow up ahead. Flashlights swept through the trees. Pearce signaled the men behind him to halt and drop, and he raised his weapon to fire. A ghostly gray head walked into the target reticle and Pearce laid a sure finger on the trigger. He hesitated.

It was Daud’s father.

Six other fighters from the village were with him. The new men took up the stretcher and the band raced back to the village, carrying Daud into his father’s house and laying him on the rug-covered dirt floor in front of the fire.

In the dim, flickering firelight, Daud looked bad, pale and beaded with sweat. His lips moved, but he wasn’t conscious. They stripped his snowy garments off and his mother covered him back up with a couple of dry blankets. Pearce checked the green Israeli bandage. There was a bloodstain, but it was small and dry. The wound must be infected. Why else the fever? Pearce had only oral antibiotics, but Daud was in no condition to swallow them now.

“Doctor,” Daud’s father said. He motioned with his hands and added, “Helicopter.”

Pearce told him in his clumsy Pashto that the snowstorm wouldn’t allow it.

“Cella, Cella,” his mother said, pointing at the doorway. Two teenage boys standing in the doorway shouted something Pearce didn’t catch and bolted away into the dark.

“‘Cella’?” Pearce asked.

The old man flashed a toothless smile.