The Guardian (40 page)

With much effort, he pulled one hand closer to his face. It was dark and sticky and smelled of wet iron. He could hear a gurgle, and he wondered whether Ainsworth had come back to life, his
lungs making one final effort to absorb the air through the pools of blood. He knew it was impossible, but then everything that was playing out before him seemed impossible.

He put the thought out of his head.

She came out of her roll firing her gun, the weapon sighted even before she was vertical. Three shots – though, judging from the precision of her movements and the clarity in her eyes, one
would have been sufficient. At the edge of the movie playing out before him, Saunders saw an enormous bald figure collapse.

He felt an inexplicable proprietary pride in her. She was not his, he knew, and she never would be. And yet it felt as though he could take some credit for some part of her. It was probably
wishful thinking, but he thought it anyway.

She remained in a crouched shooting position for a moment, the gun pointing at the tumbled mass at the other end of the room. Then, finally, she turned and looked Saunders in the eye.

He smiled at her. At least, he tried to smile. He had no idea that the muscles in his face were no longer responding to the nerve impulses his brain continued to send out, like a castaway cut
off from the rest of the world, sending an emergency message that no one could hear. She didn’t smile back.

She came to him, and he could see her lips moving, but he couldn’t understand the words. It was as though she was talking under water. That was okay with him, they didn’t have any
time for conversation at the moment anyway; they needed to get going to chase down Fasil. They could talk about whatever seemed to have her concerned later. He expressed these thoughts to her,
though they never emerged as words that could be understood.

She was kneeling over him now, a senseless gesture. They should be moving, and yet she hovered there, her lips still moving, a look of panic on her face. Then the image began to dim and narrow.
The film he’d been watching was coming to a close. That was okay with him, too. He had no more desire to be a mere spectator. If he couldn’t be a participant, what was the point of
being there at all?

The screen had gone black now, and he waited for the credits that would never come.

‘Holy shit! What the hell happened?’

Cianna heard Toney’s voice from the door. Ainsworth’s lifeless body lay in a pool of blood against one wall, and Stillwell’s enormous frame was just inside the doorway. Her
first shot had taken him just under the left eye on an upward trajectory and had blown the back of his skull off. In between the two dead bodies, she knelt over Saunders, blowing into his mouth,
desperately trying to keep him alive. She paused only long enough to shout at Toney, ‘Help me!’ He hung at the threshold for a moment, still gaping. ‘I said, help me!’ she
shouted again.

He moved toward her. ‘Is he all right?’

She blew three quick breaths into Saunders and paused. ‘Does he look all right? Do something!’

He was by her now, leaning over Saunders from the other side. She could see him looking at her dubiously. She went back to giving mouth-to-mouth. She would have performed CPR, as well, but there
was not enough of Saunders’s chest left to push down on. ‘I think he’s gone,’ Toney said.

‘No he’s not!’ Cianna replied. She redoubled her effort, blowing harder. With each breath Saunders’s chest rose and fell, giving her hope despite the wheeze of wet air
that escaped from the wound in exactly the same rhythm and strength with which she blew. She heard one of Toney’s men enter the room.

‘Holy fuck,’ he said.

‘Get on the phone and get a medevac up here, now!’ Toney shouted. ‘Use my clearance identification, and tell them to hurry!’

Cianna could hear the man on the phone, shouting orders. He returned a few moments later. ‘Are they coming?’ she demanded in between breaths.

‘They are,’ the man said. He touched her shoulder. ‘I don’t think he can survive,’ he said. ‘I was a medic in the Gulf before this.’

She turned on him. ‘You were a medic?’ He nodded. ‘Good, take over for me.’

He shook his head. ‘You don’t understand. I didn’t mean—’

She cut him off. ‘I don’t give a shit what you meant!’ she screamed at him. ‘You keep working on him until they get here, do you understand?’

The man looked at Toney, who nodded, and then he bent over Saunders and began administering CPR, while also applying pressure to the wound to try to stem the bleeding.

Toney grabbed Cianna and looked her in the eyes. ‘Did he say anything? Did you find out how they are getting out of here?’

‘No,’ she said. She bent down to try to help with Saunders, but Toney grabbed her by the shoulder and pushed her to try to get her to focus on his question. Her reaction was swift
and violent. Her fist shot up and caught him in the nose, knocking him back and drawing blood. She flew at him over Saunders’s body, grabbing for his throat with one hand as the other
battered away at him. He covered his head with his arms.

‘You bastard!’ she screamed. ‘You fucking bastard! You did this!’

‘What the hell are you talking about?’ he yelled back, still protecting himself as best he could.

‘It’s your fault!’ She continued to attack, praying with each blow that she might find relief. It was not coming, though.

‘Get off me!’ he shouted.

The cadence of his plea caught in her consciousness, and she was transported once more to her youth, kneeling on her little brother, torturing him as he called out to be released. She recoiled,
horrified. For a moment she was frozen, her mind incapable of grasping all that had happened in such a short time. She looked around the room, taking it all in. The stench of blood and gunshot and
death brought her back to the battlefields of Afghanistan: the streets and the mountains and the desert, each one splattered with the lives of those with whom she’d served, and those
she’d sought to protect. ‘Oh, Jesus,’ she said softly.

‘Cianna!’

She looked at Toney. He still had one arm over his face, as though afraid she might attack again. She sat back in despair.

‘We know where they were,’ Toney said, standing. ‘The cop saw them, and he knows how to get up there.’ He was moving toward the door. ‘I’m going up;
it’s our only chance.’

She sat there, watching Toney’s man work to keep Saunders alive, her head feeling as though someone had filled it with gravel. Then she got to her knees, leaned forward and kissed
Saunders’s forehead. She hovered there for just a moment before she got to her feet and followed Toney outside.

They found the path easily with Morrell’s help. It sliced like a wound off the northeast corner of the property, through a roll of tall grass at the edge of the trees.
Even in the gathering darkness, it was difficult to miss. Cianna, Akhtar, Morrell, Toney and his last man sprinted up the mountain, ignoring the branches that clawed at their faces as they
went.

The schoolhouse was a quarter of a mile away, its foundation drilled into an expansive slab of granite at the peak. Cianna wondered who could have conceived of such a spot for the local center
of education. It was a tiny rundown structure with an abbreviated steeple over a doorway where a bell had once sent its clarion call over the valley below. The bell was gone now, the
steeple’s wood shingles had partially pulled away revealing the wood skeleton underneath.

They approached quietly but without hesitation, all with guns drawn, hoping for a confrontation. They were disappointed, though. As Ainsworth had predicted, the place was deserted. All that
remained was a scattering of food wrappers and empty water bottles.

‘They were here,’ Akhtar said.

‘This trash could have been here for months,’ Toney grumbled in frustration, kicking an empty bag of pita chips. ‘It could have been left by campers for all we know.’

Akhtar picked up a bottle of water near the center of the one-room structure. The top was off, and it was still half full. ‘The air is dry up here,’ he said. ‘The water would
evaporate quickly, as in the mountains back home. Whoever left this was here recently.’

‘So, campers could have left this here days ago. What does it matter? We would have seen them come through Ainsworth’s property if they had been here tonight. We were right
there.’

‘There must be another way down,’ Cianna suggested. They all looked at her. ‘It’s the only thing that makes sense,’ she said.

They headed outside and spread out, walking the perimeter of the granite slab, moving east from the path by which they’d come, looking for another way down. In the dark the search was
treacherous. Twice Cianna stumbled and almost pitched down the mountain. She saw the path the second time she lost her balance close to the edge. She would have missed it were she not looking
straight down the narrow ledge, but it was there, snaking down the east side of the mountain through the sparse, low brush.

They headed down the mountain, their pace hindered by the steep slope and the darkness, until they came to a high valley between two peaks, running like a river of green for a half-mile before
climbing on the other side, back up the second rise of granite. They were two hundred yards into the lush vegetation when they heard the plane. It started as a low drone, like a dull ringing in the
ears. Cianna at first thought it was the buzz of dehydration she had experienced so many times before on the humps through the arid Afghan mountains. The noise continued to grow in volume, though,
and she noticed the others with her looking up in the sky, searching for the source.

At that moment the valley seemed to ignite with bright spotlights and a trail of tracers that ran in two parallel lines along the valley floor. It startled the group so badly that they all dove
for cover.

‘What the hell?’ Toney barked.

‘Airfield,’ Cianna said, picking her head up and looking over the valley.

‘Up here?’ Toney sounded incredulous, but it was true. A narrow strip of land had been cleared, paved and lined with lights. It wasn’t elaborate, and it would service only
small prop planes with limited range, but it was functional. At one end there was a little weather-beaten shingled hut with a windsock hanging off the top. Several of the lights along the runway
were out, but there were enough to give a good sense of the landing strip’s parameters. It looked as though the strip had been there for years, but had fallen into disrepair. ‘Ainsworth
must have put this in so he could fly up from Virginia when he used to use the house more often,’ Toney said.

The plane had circled back and was now coming in on approach. The lights were on in the small cabin, and Cianna could see through a large window that there were two men in the building, moving
about and getting ready to exit. ‘We’ve got to stop them,’ she said. Everyone looked at Toney, but he faltered. He dropped his head, and the other men looked back at Cianna.

She glanced around at the terrain, assessing their situation. The path cut through scattered waist-high shrubs. The rest of the vegetation looked to be wispy mountain grass. ‘Okay,’
she said. ‘We have to split up. If we all come down the path, they’ll be able to pick us off one by one as soon as we hit the runway.’ She looked at Morrell and Toney’s man.
‘You two, split off here to the west, and make your way off-path toward the building. Make sure that they don’t get back in once they come out. We don’t want to be dealing with a
siege.’ She motioned to Toney and Akhtar. ‘You two split off to the east and head to the far end of the runway. The plane is going to have to turn around to take off again. Get there
before that happens and take the plane out. Everyone move fast and stay low; try not to be spotted until the last second possible. They heard the gunfire from before, so they’ll be looking
for us, but the more we can surprise them, the better off we’ll be.’

‘What are you going to do?’ Toney demanded.

‘I’m going straight down the middle of the path.’

‘They’ll see you,’ Akhtar protested.

‘I certainly hope so.’

‘A diversion,’ Morrell commented, catching her plan.

She nodded. ‘Like I said, they’ll be looking for us, so let’s give them something to focus on. If they’re dealing with me, they’ll be less likely to see you until
it’s too late.’

‘But you’ll be out in the open,’ Akhtar said. ‘You’ll be an easy target.’

‘Maybe,’ she said. ‘But it’s the only way. I’ll be fine, you just worry about getting to the plane before it takes off, you got it?’

He nodded reluctantly. She looked at the rest of them, and they nodded as well. ‘I’ll wait thirty seconds. Get moving.’

Fasil looked down at the wooden box on the table next to him. He felt nothing; no sense of awe or reverence, and it angered him. Here he was, inches from one of the great
relics of Islam – the very Cloak that the Prophet Mohammed wore into battle – and yet still he felt totally unconnected to God. He wished he was more surprised.

The truth was, this was consistent with the experiences of his entire life. He’d attended the madrasa near his home as a young man under Taliban rule. He had learned the Koran backwards
and forwards, and spent the better part of three years rocking back and forth, chanting the verses, waiting for the hand of God to reach down and touch him. It never happened, though.

Others in the madrasa claimed that it had happened to them – that they had reached a point of divine inspiration through the repetition of the sacred words; that God had come down and laid
his hand upon them with his blessing. He doubted many of the stories, but the mullahs seemed pleased by every report that confirmed their methods, no matter how implausible. And so eventually Fasil
too gave in. He claimed the privilege of rapture one day after an exceptionally long prayer. In reality, nothing had happened to him.

The authenticity of his claim had never been questioned. Indeed, the mullahs seemed even more pleased than usual. They had recognized that Fasil was a gifted young man from the outset, and had
great plans for him. Fasil went along with their desires willingly, even as he felt the blackness of the hole within him. Perhaps it was this emptiness that allowed him to do the things he had done
throughout the Taliban reign and thereafter. He was not tainted with a truly God-given sense of morality, and was therefore willing to go to extreme lengths to enforce the orthodoxy that others
told him was essential to God’s desires. That was an enormous asset in uncertain times.