The Way Home (11 page)

Oh, Christ. Oh, Christ.
Fisher was down. The guys in the back were dead. He swallowed back rage and overwhelming sorrow.

Bullets pounded the snowdrifts around him. Muscle memory, training, and instinct kicked in, and he became what he’d been trained to be. A soldier. A soldier who had been marked.

He had to move. He grabbed the door and hauled himself to his feet. His right leg gave out, and he collapsed in the snow as knife-like pain screamed through his shin.

He swore through a groan when he caught his breath then fought from the ground. He laid down a burst of fire, then started dragging himself toward Fisher, cutting a path in the snow with his body. Then he roared in anger and horror when he realized that half of Fisher’s head was blown off. Red blood stained white snow and bled to black in the dark.

Fighting tears, using his buddy’s body for cover, and running on rage and adrenaline, he fired off several more bursts, then dragged himself to the rock outcropping and hunkered down behind it, nailing another two bad guys on the way.

Winded, reeling with pain, he chanced a peek around the rock and assessed his situation. When he saw what was left of the convoy, he knew he would die here.

All the vehicles but his were burning. One lay on its roof. Two teetered on their sides. Lifeless bodies hung out of doors, lay sprawled on the snow.

A masked figure ran toward him, brandishing an AK-47. “Allahu Akbar!”

More attackers followed with RPGs.

“Allahu Akbar! Allahu Akbar! Allahu Akbar!”

He dropped them all, then lay back fighting for breath in the brittle air. Finally, something gave him hope. The sporadic sound of M-4s returning fire. Horrah! Some of the guys were still out there; they’d found defensive positions. And they were giving those Tangos what for.

He quickly took stock of his weapons and ammo. He had a handful of frag grenades, his M-4 and a hundred rounds, his Beretta and three full mags, and the knife his brother had given him before his last deployment.

He pulled the pin on a grenade and lobbed it toward the AK fire. When it exploded, he nosed around the rock and nailed two bad guys who had survived the blast. They weren’t going to take him alive.

Another M-4 popped in the distance. “Go get ’em, boys,” he cheered, then double-tapped a charging figure that fell in a crumpled heap.

Winded, hands shaking from adrenaline and cold, he propped himself up against a boulder, then, on a deep breath, peeked around again and started taking out targets with single and double shots to conserve ammo.

Bullets slapped into the rocks around him. He knew he needed to move again. Moving targets were more difficult to shoot. But he had a bad feeling his tibia was broken. Which meant he was stuck until reinforcements arrived. If they arrived. He held out a small hope that someone had reached the post on the radio.

Another group of fighters charged him. Their muzzle flashes almost blinded him as they sprayed his position. He emptied the M-4’s magazine, then pulled his Beretta, killing the last Tango who’d gotten so close he fell at the base of the rock.

He belly-crawled around to the other side of the boulder, reloaded, then returned a new barrage of fire, his shell casings bouncing off the rocks, the hot metal burning his face and neck.

A streak of light registered out of the corner of his eye. He turned in time to see an RPG light up his GMV.

The ground shuddered; the air exploded around him. He covered his head, felt a blast like an inferno, then mind-blowing pain, and lost the fight to blackness . . .

H
e awoke gasping, his heart
hammering so hard his chest felt as if it would explode from the pressure. Visions of fire and blood and bullets flew through his mind like a cyclone, all mayhem and madness and speed. Too fast for him to decipher. Too horrifying for him to want to.

Then soft hands covered his, held tight in a night that was warm and dark but for a pale light burning nearby in the cave.

“You are safe,
askar
,” a woman whispered in Pashto.

You are safe, soldier.

“You are safe,” she repeated, her voice soothing and sleepy, as though she had recently awakened.

Rabia.

His heartbeat slowed fractionally, then started to settle when he realized it was her. She’d come to him again in the cave.
No. Wait.
He opened his eyes. Not the cave. The ceiling above him was whitewashed plaster, not dingy, dripping rock.

Slowly, so as not to wake the vertigo, he looked around.
Walls. Structural walls, not made of rock. A window was covered with fabric. A soft light burned from a small wooden table. An intricately patterned rug hung on the wall.

He remembered now. She had moved him out of the cave. She’d brought him to her father’s home in the village.

“How long?” he asked through a scratchy throat as his breathing stabilized.

“One hour. No more.” She offered him water. He drank gratefully as she held his head, then carefully resettled him on the pallet.

“No. Not how long was I asleep. How long have I been here?”

“Four days only.”

Painstakingly slow, he turned his head so he could look at her. And felt his heartbeat quicken again.

The burqa was gone. She didn’t wear it in the house. It wasn’t the first time he’d seen her face, but each time he did, it was a fascinating revelation. One that held him in thrall and incapable of looking away, even though he saw that his scrutiny made her uncomfortable.

“I will leave you now.” She moved to go.

“No.” He reached for her hand. Held on with as much strength as he could muster. “Please . . . please stay. Just a little while.”

With reluctance, she stopped resisting as he continued to stare unapologetically at the woman who represented the sum total of his life.

She was incredibly beautiful. Night-black hair, long and loose and falling over slim shoulders. Most Afghan women were easy on the eyes—God only knew how he knew that—and she was no exception. Clear olive complexion, delicately arched brows over dark, intelligent eyes that had once been
angry and cold but now offered compassion. Her reaction to him made her uncomfortable, though. Clearly, she struggled with what she felt.

“I’m sorry. I don’t mean to stare. It’s . . . it’s just that I wondered what you looked like for so long. It’s still new to me every time I see you.”

She looked away, then rose to her knees, her soft white gown falling over her bare feet. “I must go back to my bed now.”

She looked tired, so he let her go. She needed sleep, even if he wasn’t going to get any. After one of his nightmares, he never slept. He was afraid to.

“Why do you do this, Rabia?” he whispered, aware of her father sleeping across the small room. “Why do you take care of me?”

She looked from the hands she’d clasped at her lap to his face, then back to her hands again. A heartbeat passed while she decided what to say. “Because you invoked Pashtunwali.”

“Yeah, so you told me.” She’d explained how she’d found him and he’d asked for refuge. He didn’t remember. Had no idea why he even knew that word. Another mystery. Like the mystery of why both English and Pashto words mixed together in his head. So much muddled together that when they spoke now, it was in an odd blend of English and Pashto that somehow worked.

The bigger mystery was that he didn’t think it was only Pashtunwali that compelled her to help him. There was more to it now. When she had first come to him, she’d been hostile. Hell, she’d hated him. Barely tolerated him and clearly felt burdened by his presence.

That had changed over time. What he sensed from her now felt very much like concern and caring—and God, he needed to believe that, because without it, he was completely alone.

He needed it so much that he didn’t trust the feeling completely. Maybe there were ulterior motives. Did she and her father plan to ransom him? If so, to whom? The U.S. government? Hell, if someone from the military knew he was alive, they would have already moved heaven and earth to find him.
No man left behind.
It was the Special Forces credo.

The thought hit him like a tank.

Was
he Special Forces? If not, why would that particular spec-ops credo step front and center? Why not Navy SEAL or Marine Force Recon or Army Ranger or Delta?

Special Forces. Army. It felt right that he’d worn a green beret.

Or maybe it was wishful thinking because he’d like to believe he’d been so much more than the weak, useless excuse for a man that he’d become.

A familiar pain knifed through his head, reminding him that isolation was not a small house made of mud bricks and straw plaster in the middle of a war-torn country. Isolation was crippling vertigo, fading eyesight, and not knowing your own damn name. Not knowing if you had a family, if you had a life worth going back to, or if you even had a dog.

He forced a deep breath. Then another. He couldn’t go there. He had to deal with now. Only now was as unknown as his past.

“I must go,” she whispered again, and this time, he stopped her with a request.

“Tea. Please?”

While they never spoken of it, he knew she mixed opiates in a concoction of tea and honey that did little to disguise the bitter taste of the poppy.

She glanced toward the cooking room, then back to him. “Do you need it?”

Yeah
. He needed it. He needed the haze of nothingness the drug spread through his mind and body. The need made him a weak man. He knew that. He knew he needed to resist.

Would tonight finally be the night? Could he do it?

With remnants of the nightmare hovering just out of his grasp, he knew he should at least try. If his head cleared, maybe he would remember something. Maybe tonight he didn’t want to.

“Yes, please,” he said, ashamed to be so deep into the drug that he craved it more than his strength or the life he’d lost.

Tomorrow, he resolved, as she rose on quiet feet and walked out of the room to make his tea. Tomorrow he would try. Tonight he wanted only relief.

F
OUR MORE TOMORROWS
passed before he finally found the courage to let go of the opium.

“You are sure,
askar
?” Rabia asked with concern in her eyes.

“I’m sure.”

She didn’t ask again. She understood. She knew he had to do this.

Once he’d said no more, the tea had become sweeter.

Life had not.

He’d thought he’d known pain. But the withdrawal was beyond anything he could have imagined. Cold sweats, tremors, vomiting, anxiety, and his old friend insomnia. And then there was the pain—muscle, bone, hair, teeth, everything hurt with unconditional torture.

All in a day’s work, if you were a junkie kicking the habit.

Through it all, Rabia stayed by his side.

She bathed him.

She cleaned up after him.

She held him while he shook until his bones ached.

She soothed his brow through the night terrors.

And when he finally slept, the nightmares shot at him like bullets. Fragmented images cut into his mind like daggers, waking him to his own screams as he faced fire and smoke and IED blasts until exhaustion sucked him under again.