The Renegades (23 page)

Good. Maybe something he could use.

“If you’re not telling me the truth,” Parson said, “if he’s just making you say all this, then use the duress word.”

Apple.
The duress code this week was
apple
.

“I’m not under duress, Michael,” Gold said, “other than having an AK-47 in my face.”

Parson thought for a moment. She wasn’t tied up. Perhaps that meant something.

“Okay,” Parson said, “tell him I’ll put down my weapon. But if he shoots you, that door gun will rip him apart, and I’ll bury the pieces in pig blood.”

“I’m not going to tell him that. Just put down your pistol. Please.”

Parson considered the situation. A man was holding a gun to Sophia’s neck, but she insisted he didn’t mean to harm her. About a mile up the road lay the village and Sophia’s Humvee. She’d said they were bringing her back. And the Land Rover had been heading in that direction when Parson spotted it from the air.

He saw just two choices: trust Sophia, like he always had, or take a long, crazy shot with a handgun and maybe hit her. Not hard to do that math.

Parson put his Beretta on safe. Eased it down slowly, placed it in his thigh holster.

The man with the AK kept the muzzle at Gold’s carotid artery until Parson brought his hands back up, spread his fingers to show them empty. The man lowered his rifle. He held it one-handed at his side, let go of Gold’s hair. Then he looked at Parson—a hard look but not necessarily one of hate. The man seemed to take Parson’s measure, decide what to think of him.

With several words in Pashto, the Talib addressed Gold. She closed her eyes, let her shoulders relax. Spoke several words Parson could not understand. What else could they possibly have to talk about? Then they nodded at each other like they were drinking buddies, for God’s sake.

Gold stepped toward the helicopter. The Talib sat down in the Land Rover and closed the door.

“I’m sorry, Michael,” Sophia said as she reached his side. “I should have known you’d come after me.”

Parson didn’t know what he wanted more, to explode in anger or to question her about what she’d just done. Was it worth her life? Was it worth her career? Instead he asked, “What were you two saying at the end?”

“He said, ‘Your Bible says there is a time to kill. This is not that time.’”

“What the hell would he know about that?” Parson asked.

“He also said he wants to watch us leave. My vehicle is right up there.” Gold pointed to the village. “I’ll drive us back, and you can yell at me all the way to Mazar.”

That sounded good to Parson. Maybe the yelling part, but mainly the exit—getting out of here before things got even crazier. And more dangerous.

Parson climbed back into the Mi-17, put on his headset, pressed his talk button, and said, “Sergeant Major Gold and I will drive back in her Humvee. Go ahead and start up, and take off when you see us pull out.”

“We wait for you,” Rashid said.

“Just orbit over us as we drive. Keep an eye on the road ahead of us and behind us. I’ll have my survival radio on. Call me on the guard channel if you see anything. I still don’t trust these bastards.”

“Never,” Rashid said.

“Oh yeah—call back to command post and tell ’em we found her,” Parson said. “See you back at Mazar.”

Parson unplugged his headset from the interphone cord, picked up his helmet bag. He kept on the headset for hearing protection as Rashid’s crew started engines. With Sophia beside him, he walked up the dirt path toward the village, audio cord dangling at his waist.

21

A
t the village, Gold opened the driver’s door of the Humvee and sat behind the wheel. Parson took the passenger seat and did not speak. She wished he’d say something, but he only removed his headset, placed it on the floor, and looked through the windshield.

The branches of a St. John’s Bread tree stretched over the vehicle, and he seemed to stare at its dangling seedpods as if they presented some kind of threat. If anyone in the village was home, they stayed indoors. All the houses remained closed up tight, even that of Durrani’s wife.

Gold moved the ignition switch from
ENG STOP
to
START
. The turbodiesel fired up instantly, and she released the switch to
RUN
. The military vehicle did not require a key, and Gold realized she was lucky no one had stolen it, even absent the threat of kidnapping.

Down the hill, the Mi-17 waited with rotors turning. When Gold put the vehicle in reverse and backed away from the tree, the helicopter lifted into the air. She lost sight of the helo when it pounded low overhead, but she felt its pulsing right through the steering wheel and into her hands.

The chopper reappeared in front of the Humvee as Gold pulled out into the road. Her tires wallowed through a gully and regained their footing on firmer soil in the path. Finally, Parson spoke.

“I’m sending you home,” he said.

That didn’t surprise her. He probably meant it, too. She’d never known him to say anything just for effect. Gold waited before responding, to give him a chance to get out whatever else he had to say.

“I can’t have you making up your own missions,” he said. “Especially suicide missions.” Parson glanced at her, then craned forward to look up at the helicopter. He unzipped a pocket on his survival vest and withdrew his radio. Extended the antenna and rolled the thumb switch. The radio began to hiss.

Gold paused for a moment. Then she said, “I didn’t get myself killed.”

“Not for lack of trying.”

Several minutes passed in silence. Gold drove as fast as the rutted road would allow, which was only about forty. The Mi-17 crossed overhead once, twice. Rashid called on the radio.

“I see nothing on road,” he said.

“Copy that,” Parson said. “Keep me advised.” He released the transmit switch, turned toward Gold, and said, “At least Rashid follows orders.”

Gold nodded, conceded his point. Waited.

“All right,” he said. “What did you find out?”

“Where the Black Crescent leader might be hiding.”

Parson let his right hand, holding the radio, drop to his lap. He gaped at her wordlessly. His reaction relieved Gold a bit. At least he seemed to believe her. She knew she’d probably damaged her credibility with him by going on this mission at all. With no recording, no documents, not even handwritten notes, Gold had only her reputation to back up the intel she’d gathered.

“Uh, where?” Parson asked. Blank look on his face, like he was still processing what she’d said.

“In the
Kuh-e Qara Batur
, where Aamir wanted to take you. Durrani says there’s an old muj base at the southeast end. The ruins of a fort obscure a cave entrance, and insurgents use the place as a bunker. If you didn’t know where to look, you’d never find it from the air.”

Parson spread his arms, still apparently dumbstruck. The motion caused the equipment in his survival vest to jangle.

“How on this fucked-up earth did you get him to tell you that?” he asked.

Gold told him everything Durrani had said, how he felt Black Crescent worked against everyone’s plans, even his own. Counter-counterinsurgency.

“So he expects us to take out Black Crescent for him?”

“Yes.”

“And we probably will,” Parson said. “Hell yeah, we will.”

Parson looked through his window, out over the hills. Tightened his lips together like he was already planning. Above, the Mi-17 crossed over the road, banked, flew over the Humvee, and went out of view again. The helicopter trailed a smoky line of exhaust.

“But Durrani wasn’t a hundred percent sure?” he asked.

“No. He just thinks that’s a likely spot.”

“Hmm,” Parson said. “We’ll have to request some Predator orbits or some other kind of eye in the sky. Watch the place for a while.”

“That’s what I was thinking,” Gold said. She wondered if she’d be stateside by the time the surveillance began.

“I’ll have to see what Task Force will approve. We’ll tell ’em we got some good human intelligence. We just won’t go into a lot of detail about how we got it.”

Now Parson appeared more interested than angry. Probably the best thing Gold could have hoped. She could see his wheels already turning, perhaps imagining a reconnaissance flight. She just wished he’d let her see this thing through to the end.

Since she’d managed not to get abducted, an early retirement was probably the worst she could expect. The military did not like to slam recipients of the Silver Star. Gold had set her sights on an academic life after the Army, anyway. But she wanted to finish what she’d started. And Parson still needed her; otherwise, he wouldn’t have sent for her in the first place.

“Michael,” she said, “I don’t know if this intelligence will bring what we want. But I hope I get the chance to help you try.”

Parson rode in silence for a minute. Scanned the roadside and looked up at Rashid’s helicopter.

“It might not be up to me,” he said.

No surprise there. Undoubtedly he’d reported her missing that morning. A lot of people would know about it by now.

“So what do you want me to do?” she asked.

“Just press on like normal. If anybody asks, tell them you were gathering intel from a source. That much is true. Let me deal with the rest.”

No surprise there, either. His loyalty again. Sounded like he planned to take some heat for her.

“So you’ll try to keep me assigned to you?”

Parson slid back his seat, put his boot up on the dash. “You got fired,” he said. “But then I rehired you. Just don’t forget you got fired.”

He didn’t smile when he said that. Gold imagined he was more angry than he let on. She appreciated the respect that implied, and she felt sorry she had tested that respect so sorely. But she’d done what she had to do. Her obligations to the Afghan people ran deeper than military orders.

—

A
miscommunication.

That’s how Parson managed to spin it. Gold had been following up on a tip she first got when Black Crescent hit the refugee camp in Samangan. Not absent from her duty post. Not disobeying an order. Chasing down a lead just like she was supposed to do. Parson did not realize she had an off-base meeting that day, and he hit the panic button prematurely.

It made him look like an idiot. What kind of senior officer couldn’t keep track of his primary aide? The Joint Relief Task Force commander even made him apologize to the security forces captain he’d yelled at over the phone.

So Parson wasn’t in the strongest position when he requested Predator coverage over
Kuh-e Qara Batur
. Three days passed before he received an answer, but on the strength of Gold’s specific information, the request got approved. He watched the first video feed from the unmanned drone on a screen in the Air Operations Center.

Gold and an intelligence officer sat with him as the images beamed down. Crosshairs floated over the mountains, with technical data from the aircraft superimposed along the sides of the screen. Parson recognized some of the information: airspeed, altitude, engine manifold pressure. The rest of the data was unfamiliar, but it looked like bearing and range to whatever was under the crosshairs. He’d spent his career in manned aircraft, and though he understood the importance of these remotely piloted drones, he’d never had much experience with them.

Parson did know the Predator launched from a classified location within the theater. Once airborne, a pilot and sensor operator sitting in a stateside ground control station took over. From the United States, the team flew the aircraft via a satellite link. The Predator had a four-cylinder Rotax engine that sounded like a go-cart, but the drone ranked among the most powerful surveillance tools ever invented.

“So what are we looking for?” Parson asked.

“Anything out of place,” the intelligence officer said. “Vehicles that stop for no apparent reason. People walking where there aren’t paths to villages.”

“Anything there at all is probably out of place,” Parson said. “I didn’t see any houses or anything when we crashed up there. Just an abandoned canal.”

The feed looked like a grainy movie of nothing. Rocks and hills. Trees and scrub. A knoll above some ruins, just like the mullah had said to Gold. But no trucks or cars. Not a single person.

Parson spread a pilotage chart across the table in front of the video screen, and he tried to relate what he saw on video to a position on the chart. But the chart’s scale of one to five hundred thousand gave a topographical view too wide to orient with the Predator’s lens. He folded the chart and just watched the feed.

In Afghanistan, they didn’t need to monitor the video constantly. The sensor operator would make a note if he picked up anything, and intel analysts from Mazar to Al Udeid to CENTCOM headquarters in Florida would examine the recordings.

“How long do we get to look for something?” Gold asked.

“They told me they’d give us twenty hours over the target,” Parson said. “If nothing shows up, I don’t know if we’ll get another chance at this.”

Parson would have liked more time, but he understood the limitations. The war continued all over the country, and every commander wanted drone coverage. What battle leader wouldn’t want an eye in the sky to warn his guys of an ambush? The Joint Relief Task Force used Predators to survey earthquake damage, too. Parson knew he was lucky to get a drone assigned even for one flight.

All day, the movie of nothing kept rolling. The Predator might as well have probed some arid planet with an environment too harsh for anything but brush and gnarled trees.

The only activity came near dusk when a bird—a hawk or a falcon, most likely—soared over the hills beneath the drone. The infrared camera displayed warm objects on the light end of the grayscale spectrum. The raptor’s wings, cooled by the air flowing over them, appeared black against the warmer ground, which had absorbed heat from the sun for many hours. The bird rode the final updrafts of the day, circled as it hunted. Parson never saw it flap once, though it must have when off the screen.

The bird’s showing off, Parson mused to himself. He wants us to see he manages kinetic energy so well, he never needs to add thrust.

After gliding for several minutes, the raptor struck. It rolled into a bank of almost ninety degrees, folded its wings, and dropped like a bolt of black lightning. Parson could not see the bird’s target, perhaps a mouse or a small snake. The bird did not pull up. It remained on the ground, probably eating its prey. Idly, Parson wondered if he’d been watching a falcon or a hawk. From some corner of his mind he remembered the difference: Falcons killed with their beaks, and other raptors killed mainly with their talons. A distinction by weapons system.

He wished he could see his own target and hit it like that right now. From a distance, he’d once watched an air strike in Iraq with a JDAM launched from a B-52. At the moment of impact, the ground rippled. An orange flash appeared for an instant, followed by the roil of smoke. A beat later came the sound, more thud than blast. And another high-value target answered to Allah.

But this flight was purely recon. These video images came from an unarmed drone. An armed version, the Reaper, carried Hellfire missiles, but a Reaper had not been available. CENTCOM probably assigned killer drones to missions with a greater chance of finding something to shoot.

After full nightfall, Parson and Gold took a break from watching the video and went to dinner in the chow tent. The place smelled like all deployed location dining facilities: the scent of gravy under heat lamps, whiffs of hand sanitizer, with an aftertaste of the morning’s bacon grease. At a clipboard just inside the doorway, Parson wrote his name on the sign-in sheet, and he put
O-5
in the column for rank. He had no idea why they needed his name and rank to feed him, but he filled out the form just the same.

Third-country nationals from Bangladesh dished out food in the serving line. The TCNs looked out of place with their white uniforms and black bow ties. Gold said little; Parson knew she was probably disappointed not to have seen anything on the video. He sat with her at a long table draped in vinyl, took a few bites from a warmed-over veal patty, and sipped weak iced tea. The food was better than the group rations the chow tent had served earlier in the relief operation, but not by much.

“You said Durrani wasn’t even sure himself,” Parson said.

“He wasn’t,” Gold said. She picked at a salad of wilted lettuce. Ranch dressing covered it—her apparent effort to give it some taste.

Parson had seen Sophia a lot of different ways: engaged and in control; frightened and hypothermic; exhausted but still in command of her skills. However, he’d never seen her depressed. He tried to think of the right thing to say. Parson knew his own skills had never included a gift for just the right words.

“So the worst that happens is we waste some gas in the Predator,” he said. “Won’t be the only time we’ve acted on bad intel. Remember Saddam’s chemical weapons that weren’t there?”

Gold pushed away her salad. “I hate to think I got you into trouble with Task Force when I should have been the one on the carpet.”

“Not the first time a colonel’s chewed my ass,” Parson said. “Probably not the last, either.”

He tried to think of more words of comfort, but the growl of a C-130 takeoff overwhelmed his thoughts. Parson excused himself, went to the refrigerated dessert carousel. The trays stopped turning when he opened the door. He took out two pieces of chocolate meringue pie.

Back at the table, he stuck a plastic fork into one of the pie sections and shoved it toward Sophia.