Gravedigger (5 page)

Johnston murmured, “You took a hell of a hit. Are you okay?”

“I’ll live. What about you?”

“The kick might’ve broken a rib or two. I’ve been down that road before. I’ll live. Any ideas?”

She nodded. “Just be ready.”

Time crept by. Noa hoped Stillwater would do something soon. Strapped to the inside of her wrist she kept a small, very sharp combat knife. She also carried a gun beneath her robes. Getting to the gun was a problem. But she might be able to get to the knife if she had time without the guards watching her.

The two men were looking at her. She knew the look and didn’t like it. They whispered to each other, then nodded to her. Finally one of them walked over and dragged her to her feet. “Come with me.”

Johnston said, “What do they want?”

“Me,” she said in English.

Johnston started to roll to his feet, but the
muj
punched him in the face. Blood gushed from his nose and he staggered backward. The other man kicked Johnston’s legs out from under him and pointed the barrel of the AK47 at his head and shouted at him.

“He says,” Noa said, “to stay on the ground.”

“Noa—”

“Be ready,” she said.

The guards pushed her toward the back of the cave. They pushed her down on the ground. One of them reached for her robe. She kicked out at him, her sandaled foot meeting his knee. He staggered back. His partner laughed at him. This angered him. She edged back toward the cavern wall, her fingers twisting to get hold of the knife.

The
muj
crouched down just out of reach of her legs. “I will kill you if you fight me,” he said.

Her fingers caught the hilt of the blade.

He gripped her robes with both hands, pulled them up. She twisted and kicked out, catching him in the face. He staggered back, then kicked her in the head. She went flying. The blade slipped from her fingers. He went after her. Rolling on the ground, she scissored her legs, sweeping him off his feet. His companion laughed again.

She caught the blade with her fingers, twisted, and snipped the rope binding her wrists.

He leaned toward her.

Silently she jammed the blade into his heart.

With a scream he collapsed on top of her.

His companion shouted. Suddenly outside the cavern came the sound of gunfire.

Noa squirmed to get out from beneath her attacker.

Suddenly Johnston appeared and slammed into the other guard with his shoulder. She rolled to her feet and slashed the man’s throat.

Outside, the other guards were running. She took a deep breath. In a low voice, she said, “I’ll get the ropes. Turn around.”

Johnston offered her his arms. She quickly cut the ropes. Turning, massaging his wrists, he said, “Okay?”

“Timing is everything.”

Johnston picked up the rifles and handed one to her. “Derek’s busy. Let’s get out of here and see if he needs any help.”

Derek turned his
head and studied Noa. He nodded to her. “Not bad.”

“Not bad yourself, Stillwater.”

Sighing, Derek stood up. “I don’t suppose anybody’s seen a shovel or a pick around here?”

“Down in the village,” Johnston said. “You want company?”

He shook his head. “No. I’ll let you two get organized. We walking to Shing Dun?”

“Horses,” Noa said.

Derek closed his eyes. He was not a fan of horseback riding. Particularly through the mountains in the dark in the snow and rain. “Shit,” he said.

Pulling on his rucksack, Derek
wrapped himself in the poncho. He picked his way back down the terraces, taking his time. He was armed with an AK47, his Beretta, his knife, and extra ammo. He used the NVGs rather than the flashlight, although he thought it would be easier to dig in the grave with the flashlight.

Finally, back in the village, he went house to house. He found a spade on his third try. Hefting it, he started in the direction of what he thought might be a mass grave.

As he cut through the village, the wind was the only sound he heard. A ghost town. Dark and lonely. Abandoned.

Derek approached the spot he had seen on his first recon of the village. Studying it now, he thought he was probably right. Something had been buried here. The ground was muddy and trampled, but mounded over a specific area.

Crouching, he took off the rucksack and pulled out the chemical test kit. He ran a check on the mud. There were chemical traces, but faint and not conclusive.

Setting the ruck aside, he hefted the shovel and began to dig.

About two-and-a-half feet down, the spade broke through into an open space. A whoosh of gas, ripe from rot and decay, exploded from the hole.

Suddenly the ground beneath Derek’s feet collapsed. The spade went flying. He tumbled into a muddy pit that was now six or seven feet deep. It shifted beneath him.

Scrabbling for purchase, Derek caught what felt like a hand. His heart hammering, he focused his gaze in the dim light.

In the green glow of his NVGs he saw it was a hand.

Derek was lying in the midst of a tangle of rotting corpses.

With a cry, he struggled to escape. The bodies shifted beneath him. More mud tumbled into the pit. He lost his balance and fell back into the bodies. He sank beneath several decaying corpses.

Flailing his arms, panic gnawing at his gut, he struggled for purchase among the rot and decay, the flesh and bone and tattered, muddy clothing.

Finally he flung himself upward, rolling out of the pit into mud.

His nostrils filled with the stench of rotting flesh.

Derek staggered out of the trench, gasping for breath. He dropped to his knees in the mud and the snow, head bowed. His heart raced. He struggled to breathe.

Crawling away from the bodies, he collapsed near his rucksack, clawing at the cold ground. His ears buzzed and he thought he heard music. Latin popped into his head, music he remembered from his childhood:

Dies irae! Dies illa

Solvet saeclum in favilla:

Teste David cum Sibylla!”

He didn’t know who wrote the music. Was it Bach? Or Mozart? Derek breathed, trying to get himself under control. Rising to his knees, he look at the mass grave and wondered how many were buried here.

He collapsed back onto his hands and knees, retching into the mud and snow.

Oh God, oh God, ohgodohgodohgod!

Time passed. His breathing slowed. His heart rate normalized.

The decaying bodies had created methane gas, which had been trapped beneath the ground. When his spade broke into the grave, it released the gas. The bodies shifted, the pit collapsed, taking him with it.

Staring around, he didn’t see the spade anywhere.

“You have a job to do,” he said to the night.
Mors stupebit, et natura…

Staggering back to his feet, he snatched up the rucksack, pulled out the test kit, and walked back to the edge of the pit. Leaning down, he used a scalpel to cut off bits of flesh from the nearest corpse. He dropped them into test tubes. Moving away from the pit, he added solution from the kit. In the glow of the flashlight he watched the colors change.

More lines from the music popped into his head.
Lacrimosa dies illa, qua resurget ex favilla ludicandus homo reus.

Raised by pacifist missionary physicians around the world, Derek’s religious education was exceptional. He had even been taught Latin, although they were not Catholic. But his father had thought that Latin would be useful for when his two sons went to medical school. Only one of them had gone to medical school, Derek’s younger brother David. Derek had joined the Army, gone through ROTC, continued through a doctoral program.

Edging around the pit, Derek found another body he could reach without climbing back in with the bodies. The air was fetid. He thought of the test results. This was a potentially dangerous place, this graveyard of unblessed bodies. The tests showed organophosphates. They showed evidence of sarin gas. They showed evidence of VX gas.

He took a sample. And another.

Testing the ground, he moved closer.

More bodies. He now stood waist-deep in a mound of rotting bodies. Rain and snow filled the trench. Turned to water, to mud.

Derek took samples. He took tests.

Snow and rain wet his face like tears.

Tearful will be that day,

On which from the ash arises

The guilty man who is to be judged.

Spare him therefore, God.

Derek returned two
hours later to the encampment with dozens of tissue samples and enough test results to convince him that the village had been wiped out fairly recently by Russian chemical weapons. He walked into the camp, dropped his ruck, dropped his weapons, and proceeded to strip from the clothing he wore. As he pulled off each article of clothing he dropped them into the fire.

Johnston and Noa watched him. Noa started to say something, but Johnston cut her off. Down to his boots, Derek walked out into the snow and rain and stood naked for a long moment, shivering. Finally he returned to the camp. Johnston handed him a rough blanket and more clothes, including a heavy winter Russian military jacket. Derek quickly dressed and crouched by the fire.

“You found the grave?” Johnston asked.

Derek nodded.

“Bad?”

Derek nodded again.

Johnston crouched next to him. “Look at me, Derek.”

Their eyes met. Softly, Johnston said, “What the hell happened?”

Derek covered his face with his hands. Took a deep breath. Shook his head. “Never mind.”

“What’s there?”

“Probably over fifty bodies. Mostly women and children. The fifty is a wild-ass guess, but based on the size of the grave and the size of the village, that’s my estimate.”

“What killed them?” Noa asked.

“Sarin and VX.”

Johnston exchanged a meaningful look with the Israeli. She nodded.

Derek jerked his head toward the remaining crates. “Did you go through those?”

“They’re all RPGs,” Johnson said.

“What’re we going to do with them?”

“Take some with us,” Noa said. “Destroy the rest on our way out. Do you want something to eat?”

He shook his head. His stomach still roiled. The taste of acid filled his mouth. The stench of the dead was still in his nose, in his hair, on his skin. “When are we leaving?”

“When are you up to it?”

“The sooner the better.”

“You’re exhausted.”

Rocking slightly, he said, “I’m not sleeping here.”

Noa said, “Half an hour then. We’ve got food and water. We just need to load up the horses. It’ll be dawn in a couple hours. But we should leave here before someone comes back.”

He nodded. Noa left to attend to the horses. Crouching next to him, Johnston stared into the flames. “You thinking what I’m thinking?”

“We’ve got some mujahideen that have acquired chemical weapons. And they’re going to either use them on somebody or sell them to somebody who plans to use them.”

“That’s my mission. To figure out if that’s happened. Track them down.”

“And Noa? What’s her mission?”

“Something similar is my guess. You with us?”

Derek nodded. “I want them destroyed.”

They hauled all the remaining RPGs and guns and stacked them in the mouth of the cave. Noa took a can of kerosene she had found among the supplies and poured it over the weapons, then lit them with a torch. The flames ate hungrily at the weapons. They watched for a moment, then decided it was time to get out of there. There was no telling what the grenades would do once they got hot enough.

Johnston and Noa had prepared
six horses. One for each of them, the others loaded with as much food and gear as they could carry. Derek studied the horses. They looked to be about a two-thirds the size of horses he was used to in the U.S. Not that he had spent much time around horses. The U.S. military did not offer classes in horsemanship. He’d worked briefly with packmules in a program in the Colorado Rockies. He’d ridden a couple times in his life. He was not a fan.

“You good with horses?” he asked Johnston.

“Yup. I’ve been riding since I was a kid.”

Derek nodded to Noa. “You?”

She nodded. “Not tons, but I’m not bad. You?”

“I’m a quick learner.” He patted a saddle and frowned. “What the fuck is this?”

Grinning, Johnston said, “It’s not going to be fun.”

The so-called saddle was homemade. Boards hinged together and covered with a goatskin and a blanket that smelled like it had been born with the horse. It might be an appropriate size for Noa, but it looked tiny for Johnston and Derek. The stirrups were rings made of hammered iron attached by leather to the saddle. They seemed too high.

“These things made for midgets?”

“You notice most of these
muj
aren’t much bigger than Noa,” Johnston said.

Shaking his head, Derek manhandled his way onto one of the horses, a brown and white horse he was able to look in the eyes. When he tucked his boots into the stirrups, his knees rose up almost to his belly button. Comfortable was not a word he would use to describe it.

Johnston saddled up and looked over at him. “Holy hemorrhoids, Batman! Maybe I’ll walk.”

Noa, looking more comfortable than either of the men, said, “Grow a set, boys. Ready?”

“I don’t suppose you’ve got any idea where the hell we’re going?” Derek asked. “Or a map?”

“We found a couple maps in the gear. One’s in Russian,” Johnston said.

“Well,” Derek said. “Things are looking up.”

“That’s the spirit,” Noa said. She slapped her horse with a rein and made a tttch-ing sound. They followed her out of the encampment at a sedate pace.

Ten minutes later, they heard a series of small explosions. The RPGs going up, presumably.

The road, if you could call it that, meandered further into the mountains. Noa informed them that they would have to go up before they could start going down. As the raven flew it was about eighty miles to Shing Dun. Along the trails and roads they would be taking, she estimated it closer to two hundred.

Two hours later the snow and sleet had turned to a driving rain. An hour later was sunrise, although it didn’t do much to warm things up or dry things out. The rode in wet gloom. They crested the first mountain and started down a narrow road that bordered a several hundred feet vertical drop. Derek had suggested they walk it, but Noa had told him they’d probably be safer on the horses. “Trust the horses. Unless they get spooked and you fall off with your foot stuck in the stirrups. In that case, shoot the horse or die.”

Derek and Johnston exchanged a look. Derek said, “You train for this?”

“No.”

“Me neither.”

The morning progressed that way. Derek was exhausted, wet, and miserable. He was used to it. It was just part of the job.

He wasn’t so sure about the general’s mission and even less certain about Noa’s. Although he didn’t completely trust Noa, he did trust General Johnston. He also figured that Johnston would tell him what he needed to know when he needed to know it.

He was pretty sure that it involved a little bit more than tracking down abandoned Russian weapons.

Around noon they came to what appeared to be the wreckage of a village. It must have been bombed by the Russians during the war. It appeared abandoned, although after their last experience, none of them were going to make any assumptions. Tying the horses to the remnants of a fence, they went to recon together, AK47s at the ready.

Thirty minutes later they moved the horses next to one of the few mostly intact buildings. The building only had three walls and part of the roof had collapsed, but part of it was still intact, providing a somewhat dry spot for them to camp.

Derek went in search of the town well. It was a hand pump, but it worked. He ran a quick test on it for contaminants, found it reasonably acceptable, and filled several buckets for the horses. Finally he made it back to their campsite. Johnston had built a fire and was cooking beans and what Derek thought might be goat.

Noa sat cross-legged in the corner studying the map.

“How are we doing?” he asked her.

“Hard to tell without any landmarks or the sun or stars to judge by, but I think we’ve gone about ten miles. That would put us about here.” She touched a spot on the map with her finger. “We’ve got a couple options when we leave here. There are a few villages if we take the shortest route, but I’m not sure that’s a good idea.”

“
Muj
?”

“Probably. If we go the long way, we can skirt the villages, but it’s going to add a day or so to the ride.”

“And when we get to this village, what’s your plan?”

She continued to study the map, not answering.

Derek crouched by the fire, soaking up the heat. He looked up at Johnston. “Now would be a pretty good time to tell me what the hell we’re going to do, Jim. And maybe even why.”

Stirring the beans, Johnston said, “The Russians left Afghanistan. Congress spent millions of dollars funding the CIA’s covert backing of the
muj
, then did what Congress does – forgot all about Afghanistan.”

From behind them, Noa snorted.

“The war’s over,” Derek said, “we won, let’s go focus on something else.”

“Exactly. So the
muj
now have a bunch of weapons, no infrastructure, no government and a lot of wounded people. Also, the country’s littered with landmines left over by Russia. They’re becoming a bunch of really well-armed tribal groups that are fighting over who’s in charge. And, because the U.S.’s involvement was covert, nobody actually knows that we were the good guys.”

“So…”

“So some folks in the Pakistan military contacted us and asked if we could make contact with one or two of the warlords they think would be most desirable to be in charge on their border here. So I’m looking for a warlord by the name of Mohammad Anwari and another one by the name of Sayed Hussein Rabbani.”

“And do what?”

“Introduce myself and ask if they would like to be friends with the U.S. military.”

Derek sighed. “And you’re doing this with the knowledge of the State Department and the White House?”

“And the CIA,” Johnston added. “That’s not completely clear. Your agency certainly knows and presumably approves at some level. The White House and State? Maybe.”

“So,” Noa said, “if you make contact, you can then go back to your people in Washington and tell them you’re now friends with the future leaders of Afghanistan and you can throw money at them.”

Johnston shrugged and began dishing out the beans and goat meat. “Above my pay grade.”

Taking the food, Noa went back to her corner. “If I may say so, that’s bullshit. You’ve been authorized to make them promises.”

Again Johnston shrugged.

“And you?” Derek said to Noa.

She considered him for a moment, chewing on a bit of goat. Finally she said, “My understanding is that the two warlords Jim is looking for are pragmatists, even though they are Muslims. Muslims are not friends of Israel. However, it is possible that these two warlords would be acceptable leaders to Israel.”

“I hate this sort of thing,” Derek said. “Give me a clear objective and I’ll figure out how to make it happen.”

“Then you should have stayed the fuck out of the CIA,” Johnston snapped.

Noa smiled and continued. “But there is something else going on in this region. Some Muslim extremists groups are collecting Russian weapons and buying up weapons. Some of them are being shipped to Sudan. Some of them are being shipped to Gaza. I’m to find the leader of this group.”

Derek found the beans to be almost uneatable, but the goat tasted pretty well. He ate both, because he was hungry and he needed the calories. He studied Noa for a moment. “And when you find this leader?”

“Kill him.”