Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Combat Ops (18 page)

I guess hearing myself say those words was a little too much to bear. I screamed at the top of my lungs, “JESUS CHRIST, JOEY! JESUS CHRIST! WHAT THE HELL DID YOU DO?”

“I don’t know! I don’t know! Please don’t turn me in. I got nothing else. You know that. This is my entire life. Scott, please . . .”

“I lied in my report. Do you realize the position you’ve put me in? I need to call Gordon and tell him you killed that kid to protect me.”

He backhanded tears from his eyes, then looked at me, trying to catch his breath. “Why do you need to do that?” “Because I swore an oath. Because you swore an oath.” “If you go to them, they’ll make me talk. They’ll make me tell everything. You refused to be relieved.

That’ll come out. And we’ll both be burned.”

“Then what the hell, Scott?”

“Joey, I just can’t believe any of this . . .”

“How about I make it easier for you to stay quiet. You can blame it all on me. I’m telling you right now, that if you turn me in, you’ll be hanging from the rope next to me. I’ll make sure of that, not because I want revenge, but because you’re too damned good of a leader for the Ghosts to lose. Don’t you get it, Scott? I killed a guy for you! You can’t just throw your life away now! I killed a guy!”

“I don’t know what I’m going to do. I really don’t. I thought I had enough going on already. I didn’t expect this. Not from you, Joey. Not from you.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Tell that to the kid’s family.”

We returned to the road and reached the construction site about ten minutes later. A tent village had been erected behind the half-built school, and there I noted about twenty or thirty children seated in neat rows on blankets and listening as two teachers took turns read ing to them. The kids were surprisingly attentive, still wiping their noses and scratching themselves, but their gazes were fixed on the storytellers. Many of them had no shoes or simply thick socks. The boys wore short hair and the girls had scarves draped over their heads. Chalk boards stood on easels, and several small tables held other props like balls, water pitchers, and clay pots. Plas tic crates brimmed with dusty, weather-beaten books.

In truth I’d gone to the site in part because I thought I 
might run into Anderson again. I needed a pretty face to help temper all the ugliness around me. She was watching a group of laborers erect the walls of the school on the broad concrete foundation. Just behind her stood the sandbagged machine gun nests my team had helped build. “I’m glad you’re getting a chance to see them,” said Anderson, turning toward me and gesturing to the tent 
full of children.

“I assume they’ll have desks, once they move inside . . .” “Yes, they will. These kids need a sense of dignity. And we’ll give that to them. We’ve made a great deal here. We train the teachers and provide the educational materials if the community provides us with those teach ers. And we’re trying to recruit more girls to the classes, at least thirty percent for us to receive full funding from 
some of my sources.”

“The Taliban doesn’t want girls educated,” I said. “It doesn’t matter what they want. It’s what the peo
ple want. And if the Taliban know what’s good for them, they’ll follow the example of some of the other villages up north. This works. I’ve seen it.”

“It works until we leave. And hey, you haven’t called me about these guys turning over their paychecks to the Taliban.”

“I know. I think they know I’m watching them, and they’ve become more discreet. But it’s going on, I know it.”

“All part of the great legacy we’re building here.” She hoisted a brow and looked me dead in the eye.

“When Harruck told me about trying to build a legacy, do you know what I told him?”

“No, that it’s obvious: This school is the legacy. But we need to protect it. We need to train the police and whatever National Army troops we can get here.”

“We’ve already done what we can,” I said, gesturing to the sandbagged nests and the observation posts beyond. I lifted the binoculars hanging around my neck and panned the horizon, coming to a stop on a cluster of Taliban fighters, at least ten of them, perched on the mountain side, watching us. Our machine gunners were watching them, too.

“No, that’s not enough. We need more police, more Afghan Army troops. We need a garrison here. We need police to patrol the town.”

“Talk to Harruck.”

“I already did. I’m talking to you.”

“Why do you think that’ll make a difference? You don’t even know who I am . . .”

She smiled as if she did. She couldn’t. Unless, there was much more to her than met the eye.

“I know who
he
is,” she said, gesturing toward an old white sedan that was rumbling toward us, its hood caked in dust, its windshield wipers still working to clear away more dust. Bronco was behind the wheel. She contin ued: “I know you guys talk.”

“I’m not at liberty to discuss this any further.”

“I’m just telling you, please . . . help us.” She gave me a curt nod, and Ramirez and I stepped away as Bronco parked near the school tent and climbed out.

“You’re not looking for me, are you?” I asked.

Something for saving your ass,” he said.

I wished I could tell him my ass was far from saved. “What’re you doing out here?” I asked.

“Saw you. Figured I’d let you know about your buddy.”

“What’re you talking about?”

“They captured one of your men. I heard about it. I talked to a few of my contacts in Sangsar. They’ve got him. I’m sure you’ll hear from them soon.”

I glanced over at Ramirez, who just shook his head and sighed.

Though I hate to admit it now, when Bronco said he had news concerning “our buddy,” I’d hoped that Warris had been killed. That’s a terrible thing to wish on the man, but that was how I felt.

And I just knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that Keating would want me to rescue Warris, the very man who would burn me at the stake when we got back.

“All right, thanks for the info,” I told Bronco. “Always nice doing business with the friendly neighborhood spook. And now, what is it you want from us, because I know you want something.”

He smiled—an unfortunate grin that revealed his aversion to modern dentistry. “I want HERF guns. You came back with two of them, didn’t you?”

“Classified,” I said. “I need one.”

“Too late. Already turned them over to Army intel.” He looked away. “Damn it.”

“Among other things. We’ve got some Chinese agents in Sangsar. They’re supplying the HERF guns.”

“You got proof?”

“I got it. But hard evidence is always better. It allows me to more definitively make a move. It allows me to have my three-letter agency call your agency and get the job done right.”

I nodded. “Assholes or allies. Hard to tell the differ ence sometimes . . .”

“That it is.”

“How come you’re willing to play nice all of a sudden?” “Because now it benefits me. What else you need to 
know?”

“Just where my guy is and where I can find Zahed . . .” “I’ll get back to you on those . . .” He winked and hobbled back toward his car. Only then did I notice his limp and the deep scar running across his ankle. What I didn’t notice, though, were all the lies he’d just told me.

He could’ve won an Oscar for that performance.

I dropped off Ramirez back at the base, then headed over to Harruck’s office. I was about to open the door to enter the Quonset hut when I noticed a car parked outside and an old man, a local from Senjaray I figured, unloading luggage from the trunk. I opened the door, stepped inside, and just as the door was closing behind me—

A thundering explosion rattled the walls followed by the pinging of debris.

As Harruck and the other man shouted behind me, I took a deep breath, then slipped back outside.

The car had exploded, the man removing the luggage lying in pieces across the dirt, the flames still pouring up from the shattered windows. I raised an arm against the intense heat as Harruck’s security people were scream ing and rushing to get fire extinguishers.

Harruck came out behind me and screamed orders to his people, while the older man hollered in Pashto, then covered his eyes and began speaking so rapidly that I barely understood a word.

We watched as Harruck’s teams began putting out the fire, and the black smoke sent signals to the Taliban in the mountains and everyone in Senjaray—indeed, something had happened on the American base.

Harruck ushered the old man back into his office, and I entered behind them. The old man collapsed into his chair and tried to catch his breath. His eyes brimmed with tears.

Harruck glowered at me and said, “Well, Scott, this is obviously not the time for you and I to talk.”

“I understand.” In Pashto, I said to the old man, “I’m very sorry about this.”

He answered in English. “They must’ve rigged my car on a timer. And I guess it went off too late. They are amateurs, the men who are trying to kill me.”

“The same people you are trying to help.”

I looked at Harruck, who rolled his eyes. “Scott, this is Naimut Gul, the district governor.”

“Sir, I wish we could have met under different cir cumstances.”

“My driver was a very good man. Highly trusted.” He shuddered and rubbed the corners of his eyes.

“Governor, if you’ll just give me a moment to speak with him?” Harruck asked.

Gul nodded. “And now, Captain, I think you fully understand what I’m talking about.”

“Yes, sir, I do.”

Harruck motioned me back outside, where we walked around to the pathway between huts. The officers’ bar- racks lay to our right, and one of the guys had designed a little putting green in the middle of the desert, an oasis of sorts that Harruck pointed to and said, “See that? Crazy right here in the desert, right? Well, that’s what I got right now, with that fool inside my office.”

“What’re you talking about?”

“Everybody in the district hates the guy. He’s former Taliban, and he’s been extorting these people for years. He’s a crime lord with ties to the opium trade, but he’s still in tight with the government, and higher now tells me it’s my job to protect him. He’s moving his office onto our base. And you know what? Everybody wants this guy dead: the Taliban, the people here, even some guys in the government because they know what a scumbag he is.”

“So you’re not having a good day. Join the club.”

“If this guy sets up shop here, we’ll be painting an even bigger target on our backs.”

“But you got orders to protect him—just like I got orders to capture or kill Zahed. By the way, I ran into Bronco. His contacts confirm that the Taliban have War ris. I’ll be taking that up to higher in a few minutes.”

“That’s what I thought. And now I’m thinking about a trade—not one that higher ever knows about.”

“What?”

Harruck lowered his voice even more. “The Taliban would love to get their hands on Gul. What if we trade him for Warris? We just make it look like the governor got kidnapped.”

“Are you serious?”

Harruck spun around, cursed, then whirled back. “I don’t know what I am anymore, Scott. I really don’t. What the hell am I supposed to do with this guy?”

“Just do your job.”

“No one makes that easy—especially you. I read your report.”

“Then you know if we can’t get air support, I’ll be organizing my team to head back into the mountains and blow up that tunnel complex. We need to destroy that in order to better protect the school.”

“Are we really on the same page?”

“I don’t even know if our pages are in the same book, but those tunnels need to go. And if you got a problem with that, you’d better let me know right now.”

I stood outside the communications hut, just watching Harruck’s guys deal with the burning car and begin cleaning up the mess. That the captain’s people had not done a bomb search of the car before it had passed through the main gate was odd. I walked over to the gate and questioned the guys, who told me they had orders from Harruck to waive the search and not delay the governor’s arrival—a mistake made by the young captain. That car should’ve been left on our perimeter, and the governor should’ve been transferred into a Hummer and transported to Harruck’s office. Oh, but that was so inconvenient. I’m sure security would tighten now that Harruck had his 20/20 hindsight.

After leaving the gate, I found it harder to drag myself back to the comm hut. I couldn’t get the images of Ramirez killing the kid out of my mind. And I kept shuddering as the shots rang out and the kid fell back.

I kept seeing that blank stare on Ramirez’s face.

And I kept wondering what I looked like. What expression had he seen on my face? I couldn’t remember how I’d reacted.

And then I began playing over his rationale, hearing him tell me again and again that he’d killed for me and that he’d saved our careers. The more I thought about that, the more the paranoia filled my chest cavity like blood. I knew Ramirez was worried sick about me 
taking what he’d done to higher. Yes, I’d lied in my report. But that still didn’t mean I wouldn’t bring it up, fall on my own sword with him, and end both of our careers because it was the morally correct thing to do. My own sense of guilt would fuel his paranoia.