Gravedigger (6 page)

Derek pondered this a moment.
He wasn’t surprised that Noa was here as an assassin. “Does this leader have a name?”

“Yes. He’s a Saudi named Osama bin Laden.”

“A Saudi?”

Johnston said, “During the Russian-Afghan war a lot of Muslims viewed it as an attack on Islam. So a lot of Muslims from various countries came to Afghanistan to become freedom fighters.”

Derek finished off his beans and goat and sipped at his mug of tea. “Which we were covertly funding and providing with weapons.”

“Yes,” Noa said.

“Good guys?”

She shook her head.

“Of course not. Okay. So is there any chance that Osama bin Laden and Mohammad Anwari and Sayed Hussein Rabbani are all camping out together?”

With a shrug, Johnston said, “Maybe.”

“I doubt it,” Noa said. “Sheikh bin Laden is not considered moderate. He seems to be affiliated, at least somewhat, with a group called Harkat-ul-Mujahideen.”

Derek put his hands up in a T-formation. “Time out. You expect me to keep these names straight?”

“HUM,” Noa said. “That easier?”

“Much. And bin Laden?”

“Call him OBL.”

“HUM and OBL. What about your two warlords, Jim? Any nicknames for them?”

The general shrugged again. “Not really. We’ve sort of dubbed them the potential northern alliance, but there’s no alliance. That’s sort of what I’m trying to encourage here.”

Derek stood up. His back and butt protested. He dreaded the idea of climbing back on that horse and the hideous saddle from hell. “So, HUM?”

“Muslim extremists from Pakistan, mostly in Kashmir.”

Derek paced. He really needed a couple hours of sleep. It was still raining as hard as ever. “What do they want?”

“They would like the entire world to become Muslim and live under extremely strict Sharia law.”

“I don’t know what the hell that is.”

An annoyed expression crossed Noa’s face. “The CIA sent you undercover in a Muslim country without any education on Islam?”

Derek grinned. “But I do know the chemical structure of VX nerve gas.”

“Charming.”

“And I’ve read the Bible numerous times, even the Old Testament.”

“That won’t help you much in Afghanistan.”

Turning to Johnston, Derek said, “What’s Sharia law?”

“The legal and moral teachings of the Koran.”

“And HUM wants everyone in the world to live by this?”

“Yes. And not as it’s practiced in the twentieth century, but how it was practiced in the first and second centuries.”

“For instance?”

“Think Iran under Khomeini,” Johnston said. “Think stonings and hangings and women not being allowed to go out in public without covering their hair and faces, or without the permission of their husbands, brothers, or fathers. Think females not being allowed to be educated – no school at all. Think Salman Rushdie going into hiding because the Ayatollah declared a fatwa on him because he wrote a novel nobody read called ‘The Satanic Verses.’”

“I read it,” Noa said.

“I understand,” Derek said. “So how do we find all these people, turn your northern alliance into a northern alliance, and assassinate this guy who wants Muslim nutballs to run the world?”

“I think we found HUM,” Noa said. “And you killed a bunch of them.”

Derek nodded. “Just doing my part.”

“We find people who can point us toward Mohammad Anwari and Sayed Hussein Rabbani,” Johnston said. “They’re in the area, more or less. There aren’t that many people. We just find some that don’t try to kill us on first sight and ask them.”

“And hope they’re not like Khan and his people,” Noa said.

Derek rolled his eyes. “That’s all. Sure. Okay. I’m going to catch a few hours sleep. I’d take the first watch, but if I don’t sleep for a couple hours I’m going to fall down.” And with that, he lay down on a blanket by the wall and slipped into darkness.

Several hours later, Derek was startled awake by a roaring sound. Sitting up, he saw both Johnston and Noa were already up, scanning the sky. It was day, but still raining and cloudy. It was difficult to determine where the sound was coming from.

Suddenly Noa pointed. In her left hand she held a pair of Russian-made binoculars she must have gotten off the dead Afghans.

The sound grew louder. Out of the gray clouds burst a helicopter, flying low. It swooped past them with a roar and continued on toward the nearest valley between mountains.

Derek said, “Is that what I think it was?”

With a nod, Johnston said, “An Mi-24 attack helicopter.”

They looked at each other. Derek said, “So maybe that rumor about a Russian with a chopper isn’t bullshit after all.”

Worry creased Johnston’s weathered face. “Maybe not.”

Crouching by the fire with the map spread out on her knee, Noa was muttering to herself. Derek, groaning as his back protested, squatted next to her. “Where are we?”

“Maybe here,” she said, pointing.

“And the chopper was coming from this direction.” He tapped the map. “Kabul?”

She nodded. “The capitol. And a fairly major city.”

“You’d think someone would notice a Russian attack helicopter in a city that big,” Johnston said.

The Israeli shrugged. “If he needs to fuel up, that’s one of the likelier places.”

“Fine,” Derek said. “But where was he headed?”

They studied the map. Derek blew out a puff of air, frosty despite the rain. He tapped the map. “Shing Dun.”

“Possibly,” Johnston said. “But these mountains are killers for helicopters. He could have just been taking the lowest altitude route through here. Once through, he could go anywhere.”

“Either way,” Noa said, “we need to go through the pass to get to where we’re going. Ready?”

They estimated they
had about three hours of daylight – such as it was – to travel before they were going to have to camp again for the night. They debated staying where they were until starting again, but Noa pushed to get to a lower elevation, partly in hopes that the temperature would be more reasonable.

They broke camp quickly and climbed back on their horses. Derek had named his Comanche. “Why Comanche?” Noa asked. “Isn’t that an Indian tribe or something?”

“It was the horse that survived Custer’s last stand,” he explained. “I’m hoping for some good karma. I wanted to name him Hemorrhoid, because he’s such a pain in the ass.”

Comanche snorted and shook his shaggy head. Derek stroked his neck. “You and me, brother.”

Johnston grinned. “I’ve been calling mine Cheney.” Derek laughed.

Noa looked confused. “Why?”

“Dick Cheney is the Secretary of Defense,” Derek said.

“And he’s a pain in the ass,” Johnston added. “Are you naming your horse?”

She patted her horse’s neck. “Caleb.”

Raising an eyebrow, Derek said, “As in Caleb and Joshua?”

Climbing on Caleb, she looked at him closely. “You do know your Bible. Of course.” She kicked Caleb in the flanks and their little caravan headed down the mountain pass. She went on ahead, Caleb and her spare horse followed by Johnston and Derek and their horses.

Johnston said, “Caleb?”

With a nod, Derek said, “Caleb and Joshua were the only members of the original Israelites that fled Egypt to enter the Promised Land.”

The horses clomped along, uncomfortable but reliable. The trail here wasn’t as dangerous as the first part had been, and after an hour of travel, broadened out into a wide valley. There was actually grass here, so they let the horses feed for a while. Noa studied the map and then scanned the area with the stolen binoculars. She pointed. “That way, I think.”

“Not Shing dun?” Derek asked.

“No. Zin. If the map is at all accurate, we’ll have to go up and through that pass. And on the other side should be a village called Zin.”

“Mohammad Anwari is supposed to be headquartered there,” Johnston said.

They rode for another two hours. They were just beginning to enter another mountain range and the path had narrowed. It would be a harrowing trip in the daylight, let alone in the dark. They found a shelf of rock to camp under, staked the horses so they could feed, and tried to make the best of a lousy situation.

Settling in for the night, Derek thought about the story of Caleb and Joshua. When the Israelites had neared Canaan, the so-called Promised Land, Moses sent twelve spies, one from each tribe, into the city to find out what was there. Ten came back and said that giants lived there and would crush their army. Joshua and Caleb came back and told Moses what he wanted to hear, that God would help them out and Canaan would be theirs.

Moses, with apparent lack of faith in the two spies who claimed to know what God wanted, chose to listen to the ten skeptics. So God, pissed off that Moses and company ignored his advice, had them wander around in the desert for forty years.

Derek thought about God for a few minutes and the fact that the three of them seemed to be wandering around without actually knowing where they were going. He thought about spies who told tall tales and spies who told the truth and were ignored. Then he drifted off. He had the third watch, Noa the first, Johnston the second.

Several hours later Noa shook him awake. “Already?” he said, feeling exhausted.

She put a hand over his mouth and whispered, “We’ve got company.”

There wasn’t really any place
to hide. They each grabbed an AK47. Johnston threw a couple pieces of wood in the fire. Derek looked at him for a moment, then grabbed a cooking kettle and shook it. “We got extra water?”

“What’re you doing?” Noa asked in an urgent whisper.

Johnston pointed. Derek topped off the kettle from a canteen and hung it over the fire. “I’m making tea,” he said.

She stared at him. Her eyebrows raised as she got it.

In a minute a voice shouted out of the darkness. Noa said, “They’re basically saying hello.” She shouted back.

A moment later three men in traditional Afghan dress appeared. Two them were bearded. One was younger, maybe fifteen, and didn’t look like he shaved at all. They each led a horse on a rope. Each carried an AK47.

Noa and one of the men spoke for a while. She turned to Derek. “They accept our invitation of tea.”

Johnston indicated he’d help them tie up their horses. Derek prepared the tea and when they returned, he offered it to them. The six of them sat around the fire sipping the tea. The men were very wet and appreciated both the tea and the fire. Derek held up some dried meat and offered it to them, indicating Noa should tell them they didn’t have much food, but they were willing to share it.

The group accepted the food, but also offered their own. Soon they were all drinking tea and eating dried fruit, nuts, and
naan
, or flatbread topped with poppy seeds. They also had dates and olives.

Noa spoke with them. They were friendly. The youngest was the oldest one’s son and he seemed to be the least comfortable around Noa. She explained to Derek and Johnston that they were from Zin and were more or less a scouting party. The head of their tribe, as she put it, was indeed Mohammad Anwari.

It turned out that Mohammad Anwari’s group had been involved in an ongoing series of skirmishes with another local warlord, Abdul Karim Azimi. In his head, Derek dubbed this new player AKA. At least part of the battle involved who controlled the valley they had recently cut through, because it was good grazing land, which was hard to come by in Afghanistan. Mohammad Anwari’s group’s village, Zin, was just on the other side of the mountain. AKA’s group was just over another mountain pass on the far side of the valley. These three were scouting the pass, making sure that none of AKA’s people were planning on coming over the mountain in the middle of the night and attacking Zin.

Derek sat and listened carefully. What they were describing wasn’t exactly a civil war, but the kind of clusterfuck he’d spent time advising on for Special Forces prior to Operation Desert Storm. He’d hit all the garden spots of the world – Zimbabwe, Cote d’Ivoire, Liberia, and Zaire, just to name a few.

The thing he had learned during these advising jobs for the U.S. government and military was that alliances were unstable and you had to watch your back. The idea was to find the most rational and influential warlord and back him with training, money, and weapons, not necessarily in that order. The joke of it was that “rational” was rarely the best word to describe these mad dogs of the third world. In Derek’s experience, the best words to describe them were “ruthless” and “psychopathic.” At this moment his greatest wish was to return to CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia and kick the shit out of Richard McGee, his boss at the Agency, who had sent him here.

Johnston was having Noa tell the men that he very much wanted to meet their boss, Mohammad Anwari. The exchange between the men and Noa went on for some time. Finally she said, “I was hoping they would escort us there tonight, but they say they can’t, they have to complete their reconnaissance. But they will escort us there at daybreak.”

With that agreed upon, the
muj
thanked them and rode their horses off into the rain and darkness.

Johnston looked at Derek. “What are you scowling about?”

“I think I’ve ridden this train before and I wasn’t too happy about where it ended up.”

“What are you talking about?” Noa said. It was her turn to clean up after the meal. Usually Johnston cooked and she and Derek took turns cleaning and repacking. She was scrubbing at one of the stolen cook pans with a cloth and a bit of sand.

“Derek’s getting pissy,” Johnston said.

Derek stood up. “You know what I’m talking about, Jim.”

“I have a job to do. We all do.”

Derek stared at him. “Oh fuck it.” He walked away from the campsite into the darkness, the rain cold on his face. Behind him he heard Noa say, “What’s his problem?” and Johnston reply, “Derek’s an idealist at heart.”

Then he didn’t hear anything else because he walked further up the trail and out of earshot. He let his eyes adjust to the poor light. It was dark, still raining, no stars or moonlight. Behind him he could see the flickering firelight.

He hiked around in the dark for a while, trying to calm down. The constant rain drove him back toward the camp. Pausing on a craggy overlook, he could see their campsite below him, Johnston and Noa sitting next to the fire talking. Scanning his surroundings, he got a dim sense of the valley spread out below them.

A flash of light lit up. Another. Then another.

He started running toward the campsite. As he ran, the distant sound of gunfire followed the flashes of muzzle fire.

“Don’t shoot me,” he shouted as he raced into the camp. Both his partners were on their feet, AK47s at the ready. “Our buddies down there must have run into somebody. Let’s go.”

“Derek—” Johnston said.

And then more sounds came to them. More gunfire. Much more than was likely to be made by a handful of people shooting at each other. Noa was scanning the horizon with the binoculars, but Derek and Johnston were scrambling to throw their gear into packs and running toward the horses. She kicked sand over the fire, caught up her rifle and bag and rushed after them.

It took only a couple minutes to saddle the horses and get them packed. Flinging themselves onto their horses, they headed up the trail, away from the fight. The fight was growing closer and louder. And in addition to gunfire came the rumbling sound of horses – dozens of them, at least.

The trail upward was not good for a night ride. Derek wore his night vision goggles and wasn’t sure if that was good or bad. Their horses seemed comfortable with the narrow and twisting route, although they refused to move at more than a canter. With a steep drop on one side, that was just as well.

They hoped to stay ahead of the hostiles, but Derek wasn’t convinced that was going to be possible.

Behind them came the sound of a horse moving very fast. Derek spun off his horse, knelt and aimed the assault rifle. Breathe in. Breathe out. Focus.

Out of the gloom came the oldest man. Over the horse lay the boy. His eyes grew wide when he saw them.

Noa spoke with him for a moment. “He says Omar and his horse are both dead. That they’re coming.”

They knew that. They could hear the thunder of hooves.

Derek looked around them. Pointing, he said, “You take the horses and go. Jim and I will box them.” He was hauling two RPGs from the back of one of the horses as he spoke, tossing it to Johnston. To the general, he said, “I’ve got the NVGs. I’ll strafe forward. You strafe the rear. Then we’ll unleash the grenades.”

Johnston nodded and ran toward the sides of the canyon, climbing quickly in the dark. Noa disappeared quickly from view with the horses. It was a mad scramble, but Derek got a high spot and settled in with the AK, the RPG, and several clips.

He had just gotten settled when the first of the horsemen appeared in his night vision goggles. He knew that the first of the horsemen had just passed Jim’s location. Wadding the finger of a glove in each ear, he counted silently, then unleashed a burst of gunfire. The horses reared and the mujahideen shouted, firing blindly.

Dropping the AK, Derek picked up the RPG, slammed home a rocket and waited.

From Johnston’s position diagonally across the canyon, a chatter of gunfire. The
muj
were stuck in a crossfire. If they had any brains they’d turn and get the hell out of there.

They didn’t. They tried to push ahead.

Derek fired the RPG. Even with the cloth jammed in his ears, it was deafening.

The RPG destroyed at least one horse and rider. Shrapnel and fire tore through others. The air filled with the screams of horses and men.

From the other side of the canyon Johnston fired another RPG into the heart of the group of remaining men.

Two horses and riders remained. They wheeled their mounts and headed back the way they had come.

Derek watched through the NVGs for several minutes, before slowly climbing down from his perch. Johnston joined him a moment later.

He counted ten dead men and an equal number of horses. Two of the horses were still alive, but struggling from wounds. Derek took out his handgun and ended their lives, shaking his head. This wasn’t why he had joined the CIA or come to Afghanistan.

Turning, he saw that Johnston was kneeling by one of the
muj
. When Derek joined him, he saw that this one was alive, though barely. Neither of them spoke Pashto, Arabic or Farsi. Johnston was talking to the man, but in English, in too low a voice to hear. Maybe comfort in his final moments. Derek didn’t know. He walked around and checked the other men, but they were all dead.

He scavenged a couple spare clips and said, “Ready to go?”

Johnston looked up and tapped his ears. “I can’t hear crap,” the general said.

Derek nodded. Firing an RPG next to your head could permanently damage your hearing. His own ears rang, but he thought he’d be fine eventually. He waved his arm, indicating they should start hiking. Johnston nodded.

Side by side, the two men began to follow the trail Noa had taken.