The Mullah's Storm (25 page)

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Authors: Tom Young

BOOK: The Mullah's Storm
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“I’ve been meaning to ask,” she said. “Did you ever confirm what happened to that family that took us in?”
“We found them dead outside.”
Gold closed her eyes. She didn’t speak for a while. “Terrible things happen both to the just and the unjust,” she said finally.
Parson tried to imagine how she must feel about all this. Learning their language and culture, learning to think like them, trying to distinguish between the good, the indifferent, and the truly evil.
“I still can’t believe you don’t hate any of these people,” he said, “after what you’ve been through.”
“That wouldn’t make it easier. It wouldn’t make my fingers hurt any less.”
“But you must be mad at the ones who did that,” he said.
“Sometimes.”
“You have a tough job, Sergeant Gold,” Parson said.
“Sometimes.”
“Are you going to go with these guys in the morning?” he asked.
“It’s up to Captain Cantrell,” Gold said.
When Cantrell heard his name, he sat next to them. Parson realized their presence meant another decision for Cantrell, an added layer of complexity to a mission already hard enough.
“What do you want us to do tomorrow?” Parson said.
“Do you think you can keep up with us?” Cantrell asked.
“We’re a little worse for wear, but we won’t slow you down.”
“In that case, I can use two more sets of eyes.”
“We’ll try not to get in the way,” Parson said.
When Gold finished eating, she got up and spoke to Najib and some of the ANA soldiers. Parson wondered whether she was asking questions, giving advice, or making small talk. Her tone seemed authoritative but kind. Parson thought Pashto had a soothing lilt to it when the words weren’t shouted or spat in anger. Or maybe it just sounded better when she or Najib spoke it.
Gold unrolled two cold-weather sleeping bags. She unzipped one and placed it beside Parson. It took the last of his strength and wakefulness just to roll over into it and zip it back up. He didn’t even remove his survival vest and body armor. Just pulled the .45 out of the vest’s holster and kept his hand on it. He faded into sleep as he watched Gold zip up her own sleeping bag a few feet away.
It seemed only seconds later when Gold shook him by the arm. But when he finally got his eyes to focus on the luminescent dial of his watch, he saw he’d slept six hours. The SF troops were already on their feet. Gold handed him a water bottle. He sipped, then swished water, swallowed. Cantrell offered a small toothpaste tube. Parson squeezed some onto the tip of his index finger and brushed his teeth with that. He wiped his hand on the leg of his flight suit, rolled up the sleeping bag, and gathered up his gear. He took a last look at the wounded troops and their guardians left behind. They did not look back at him.
Parson and Gold followed Cantrell and some of the men deeper into the cave. Flashlight beams played across the cave walls. Most of the soldiers had lights mounted on their M-4s. Occasionally a red dot appeared in the middle of a bright pool of white light as the troops checked their laser sights.
One light beam stopped on the body of an insurgent. Somebody wounded yesterday who’d crawled this far, Parson guessed. No one commented. The flashlight beam moved away and the troops pressed on. Parson shined his own light around as well. In two places he saw brick defilades built up from the cave floor. Perfect places to take cover and shoot in the event of a running firefight through the cave. Maybe it’s a good thing the bad guys had an escape route, Parson thought, or else the battle yesterday might have been a lot bloodier.
Empty crates and ammunition boxes lined the walls. A PKM rifle in the dirt. Discarded clothing and clay cookware. Yellowed and sodden manuals, some in Russian, some in what looked to Parson like Arabic, some in languages he could not even guess. Just behind him, Gold shined her light on some of the books, paused, and touched one of them.
“Dari,” she whispered, “and Serbo-Croatian.”
Farther on, Parson saw a barbell with fifty-pound lead weights on each end. Probably a terrorist training camp for years, he thought.
The passage narrowed until the troops had to crouch. Parson felt the air grow colder.
“Lights off,” Cantrell whispered.
Parson switched off his light and plunged into total darkness. He had his night-vision goggles in an outside pocket, ready for this moment. He turned them on and looked through them. In the black of the cave they offered poor resolution, but he saw the soldiers in front of him kneeling, nearly crawling out a narrow exit. Some had to remove their rucksacks to get through.
When Parson’s turn came, he took off his pack and handed it through the hole to a soldier outside. Opened the bolt on his rifle and passed it out, too. Lowered himself to his knees and felt the hard stone floor of the cave, sharp pebbles grinding under his hands.
It was like crawling into a deep freezer. The cave was chilly, but the wind outside hit him with a whole new order of cold. Parson estimated the breeze at fifteen knots. That could make twenty degrees feel like minus five. He pulled his woolen watch cap down tighter and placed his parka’s hood over his head. Took his pack and rifle and reloaded the weapon. The frigid air seemed to burn inside his chest.
He saw Cantrell whisper something into his radio. A few minutes later, Najib and some of his men emerged over the ridge and out of a night that still seemed black and thick as oil. Parson guessed they had come around the mountainside to maintain overwatch while the rest of the troops took the route through the cave.
The snow sissed against Parson’s clothing, flakes driven by the wind into Gore-Tex fabric. The troops stood motionless while Cantrell and Najib examined the tracks left by the insurgents. New snow had softened the edges of the footprints, but the trail was still discernible. The two men stooped, peered through NVGs, conferred, gestured. Najib led the way along a couloir that ran downslope.
Parson worried momentarily about avalanches again, but here the incline seemed too shallow for that particular peril. Not that there weren’t enough others. He felt he was already on borrowed time.
Gold stopped to buckle on her snowshoes, then took several running strides to catch up. She seemed strong enough. Like herself again.
With dawn, the darkness lightened to the color of tin and stayed that way, as if the night had congealed. The troops no longer needed their NVGs, and Parson stowed his own goggles. Now that he scanned the landscape with the naked eye, he saw that this side of the ridge offered little more cover than the opposite slope. Just a white expanse broken by occasional stunted camelthorn, gnarled branches sheathed in rime. The mountains loomed like swells in an ocean of snow.
Parson tried to count the sets of footprints the team was following. It looked like at least twenty, but it was hard to say. Perhaps more than his own group. The only good news was that he saw no horse tracks. If the insurgents were all on foot now, that brought the odds from impossible to merely bad. He saw no blood around the footprints, either, but that meant little in the continuing snowfall. So maybe they had wounded and maybe they didn’t.
He looked more closely at the footprints. A few showed longer toe drags. That meant they were carrying something heavy. Perhaps larger weapons, perhaps an injured fighter, perhaps an elderly mullah.
The trail led through a pass marked by a creek that seemed to smoke as if it flowed with acid. Vapor from a hot spring, Parson supposed. The footing near the stream became tricky because of strange ice formations. The troops picked their way through a field of frozen spikes and pyramids a little shorter than knee high. Parson nearly tripped over these ice spears several times. He had no idea what hydrology could have produced such an obstacle, but what interested him more was that the guerrillas’ footprints led straight through it. Not around it where the walking would have been easier. Like they were making a beeline for something.
Apparently Cantrell and Najib had the same idea. They stopped, and Cantrell opened his case of maps and photographs. He unfolded a topo chart.
“They’re heading almost due east,” Cantrell said. “That doesn’t take them toward any village I can see.”
“Unless they have another cave complex,” Najib said.
“God, I hope not.”
Gold looked over their shoulders, perusing the map and satellite photo.
“Where do you think they’re going?” Parson asked. “You’ve talked with some of these people.”
Gold said nothing for a moment, just looked at the tracks trailing off into the mist and snow.
“Pakistan.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
 
P
arson followed a few paces behind Najib and Cantrell, shivering. Katabatic wind blowing downhill pushed the flakes sideways across the valley. Parson slung the M-40 over his shoulder and unzipped his parka long enough to tie the drawstring tighter around his waist. He hoped Gold was wrong about the bad guys heading for Pakistan, but he’d never known her to be wrong about anything. That was a long way on foot, but these lunatics seemed willing to endure anything for jihad, martyrdom, and their seventy-two virgins.
And if they made it to the border, what then? They’d probably disappear into Waziristan’s tribal areas. It wasn’t like terrorists hadn’t done that before. No chance of getting them there unless a Predator happened to fly right over them. The B-2s could nuke the whole fucking region, as far as Parson was concerned. Well, maybe not. Muslims like Najib and his men were all right.
A
crack
-BANG interrupted his thoughts. Parson dropped flat to the snow. The echo rolled through the mountains like thunder.
He heard no scream, no moan. Either a miss or a very clean kill. He wanted badly to raise his head and look, but he knew that if he did he might draw the next round. The bullet must have come close for him to have heard the supersonic snap before the explosion of gunpowder.
Parson held his breath. Waited for another shot. Coppery taste in his mouth. Bile and fear. He did not need to see anything to know who had fired. A single, disciplined 7.62-millimeter shot from that infernal Dragunov.
Silence. He kept his head down and turned it as slowly as he could will himself to move. From the corner of his eye, he saw disturbed snow where Cantrell had hit the ground. No real cover, Parson thought, just concealment in the white powder. There’s very little between us and that Dragunov that would stop a bullet.
“Careful,” Cantrell hissed. “If anybody has a shot, take it.”
Parson had been carrying his rifle with its forend in the crook of his elbow when he hit the ground. Now he was lying on top of the weapon with the scope grinding into his solar plexus. Not in a position to do him a hell of a lot of good. He thought of the old saying about never feeling more foolish than when your weapon’s not in your hands when you need it. At least he saw that the muzzle was clear and not plugged with snow or dirt. His wrist ached from the fall.
He came to the sickening realization that he, Gold, and the rest of the troops were now pinned down by a patient and skilled adversary. The son of a bitch was obviously taking his time, waiting for someone to screw up and give him a good target. Very unlikely the team would get out of this without losing someone. And even if they did, Marwan could harass them with sniper fire indefinitely, covering his group’s retreat.
Parson dared not move any of his limbs. As it was, he saw the watch on his left wrist. It ticked so slowly that for a moment he thought the second hand was broken. Pinprick sleet fell with the snow now, and it seemed he heard the impact of each separate ice grain. He wondered whether he’d hear anything if a slug hit him in the head.
“There’s an outcrop to the northeast,” Cantrell whispered. “Maybe three hundred meters. I think that’s where the shot came from.”
From the corner of his eye, Parson saw Cantrell roll to his right, M-4 held tight against his torso. A burst of dirt and snow erupted beside the snake-eater’s head. Then the slamming report of the Dragunov.
Cantrell popped up behind a low boulder. Compacted snow sloughed from his uniform. Another shot came. The bullet glanced off the rock, sprayed Cantrell with grit and ice. Parson heard the growl-whine of the ricochet.
“Yeah, that’s where the fucker is,” Cantrell said. “When I open up, rush to cover, then give me a mad minute on that outcrop.”
Before Parson could wonder what that meant, he heard the cackle of Cantrell’s rifle on full auto. The troops leaped from their burrows in the snow, kneeled behind trees, rocks, and brush. Then they all began shooting at once. The rifle fire rose into a crescendo like the roar of something enraged. Fountains of brass poured from their ejection ports.
Parson scrambled to Cantrell and dropped prone beside the boulder. Aimed the M-40. Through the scope he saw the strikes of bullets: flying rock and snow, shuddering branches, splinters. He did not see any clear target. He fired anyway to add to the general effect. Cycled the bolt, fired again. Parson suspected he was wasting ammo, because anything near that outcrop had to be dead by now.

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