Against All Enemies

6 VERSE OF THE SWORD

The chief of the Shawal tribes had called an important meeting to be held at his mud-brick fort down in the Mana Valley, but Mullah Abdul Samad had no intentions of attending. Instead, while the chief’s misharans began to gather outside the fort, he remained on the hilltop, crouched beside a stand of trees, along with his two most trusted lieutenants, Atif Talwar and Wajid Niazi.

Samad had detected movement on the opposite hillside, and on closer inspection with his binoculars, he marked two men, one dark-haired and bearded, the other much younger and leaner, his beard thin and short. They were dressed like tribesmen, but one consulted a satellite phone and what Samad assumed was a portable GPS unit.

Talwar and Niazi studied the men themselves, and while both were still in their twenties, nearly half Samad’s age, he’d spent the last two years training them, and they both offered the same assessment of their visitors: They were advance scouts for American intelligence, for the Pakistan Army, or even for an American Special Forces unit. The chief’s foolish and poorly trained men had not picked up these two, and so his forces would pay the price for their ineptitude.

The chief liked to throw the tribal code of conduct into the faces of government officials. He liked to threaten the Army and point out its losses in South Waziristan as an example of what would happen if they attacked him. He said the government should know that his people would use the tribal codes and councils like the jirgas to find answers to their problems and needed the government’s help with only the basic necessities of life, not with how to rule their people. He assured them that his people would never harbor criminals, that there were no “foreigners” in Shawal, and that bringing harm to his people and their land was the farthest thing from his mind. But the chief wasn’t a very good liar, and Samad would make sure he died for that …perhaps not today …or tomorrow …but soon.

The scouts did not move as they surveyed the surrounding valleys with their own binoculars. They seemed particularly interested in the long lines of apple trees that curved down the hill, toward more rows of apricots. Fields had been hewn into some of the steepest hills overlooking the village, and the trees did make for good cover. These men had indeed spotted a few of the chief’s guards posted on the perimeter. But they were hardly paying attention to the spies behind them, and once more Samad could only shake his head in disgust.

The American and Pakistani governments had good reason to believe that the tribes here were sheltering Taliban and Al-Qaeda fighters; the Datta Khail and Zakka Khail tribesmen had been known for hundreds of years for their deep bonds of loyalty and for their land being a natural sanctuary for rebels. The current chief was no exception, except that he’d been receiving a lot of pressure from the Americans now, and Samad thought it was only a matter of time before he succumbed to their force and betrayed him and the forty other men training here on the Pakistan side of Shawal and about ten kilometers away, within the Afghan side of the area.

After September 11, 2001, the Pakistan Army entered the area with a mission to secure the border against Northern Alliance soldiers pushing eastward from Afghanistan. While there could have (and in Samad’s opinion, should have) been a confrontation, the local tribes welcomed them, and check posts were established. In the years to follow, the tribal leaders would regret that mistake, as many near and dear to them were killed by American drones and daisy cutter bombs because the Americans suspected there were terrorists in the area. The Americans would offer an apology and pathetic reparations, even as they murdered civilians in the name of justice.

In recent months, however, the tribesmen had come to their senses and had been refusing requests from both the Americans and the Pakistani government. There had been, for a few years, a tribal lashkar formed, and it was this group’s mission to arrest all fugitives and resistance fighters within the Shawal area. Only a few days prior, the chief had received word from Islamabad that officials were not pleased with the lashkar’s performance and that the Army might need to return in great numbers to the area to weed out the fugitives. Samad and his people, along with their leader, Mullah Omar Rahmani, who was presently in the Afghan area, had struck a deal: If the Army returned, the Taliban and Al-Qaeda forces would equip and reinforce the tribesmen against any attacks. Moreover, Rahmani had assured the chief that he would be paid handsomely for his assistance. Rahmani had no shortage of funds so long as the poppies continued to grow and the opium bricks continued shipping overseas. Their most recent deal with the Juárez Cartel of Mexico would make them the major provider of opium into that country if the cartel was able to crush its enemies. While Mexico had never been one of the major buyers of Afghan-produced opium, Rahmani planned to change that and have his product better compete with South America’s cocaine and crystal-meth industries, which provided massive quantities of those drugs to the cartels, who in turn got them into the hands of Americans.

Samad lowered his binoculars. “They’ll come for us this evening,” he told his lieutenants.

“How do you know?” asked Talwar.

“Mark my words. The scouts are always a few hours ahead. That’s all. Never more. Rahmani will call to warn us.”

“What should we do? Can we get all the others out in time? Can we run?” Niazi asked.

Samad shook his head and lifted an index finger to the sky. “They’re watching us, as always.” He stroked his long beard in thought, and within a minute, a plan congealed. He gestured that they move back and away, keeping closely to the fruit trees and using the ridge to shield themselves from the spies.

On the other side of the hill lay a small house and large fenced-in pens for goats, sheep, and a half-dozen cows. The farmer who lived there had repeatedly cast an evil eye at Samad when he brought his troops into the valley nearby for target practice. This was a Taliban training ground, and the farmer was well aware of that. He’d been ordered by the tribal chief to assist Samad in any way he could; he had reluctantly agreed. Samad had never spoken to the man, but Rahmani had and had warned Samad that this farmer could not be trusted.

In times of war, men must be sacrificed. Samad’s father, a mujahideen fighter who had battled the Russians, told him that on the last night he’d seen the man alive. His father had gone off to war carrying an AK-47 rifle and a small, tattered backpack. His sandals were falling apart. He’d looked back at Samad and smiled. There was a gleam in his eye. Samad was an only child. And soon only he and his mother were left in the world.

Men must be sacrificed. Samad still carried a photo of his father protected by a yellowing plastic film, and when the nights grew most lonely, he’d stare at the picture and talk to the man, asking if his father was proud of all Samad had accomplished.

With the help of several world-aid organizations, Samad had managed to finish school in Afghanistan, and he’d been handpicked by yet another aid group so he could enroll at Middlesex University in the UK on a full scholarship. He’d attended their Dubai regional campus, where he’d earned an undergraduate degree in Information Technology and further honed his political interests. It was there at Middlesex that he’d met young members of the Taliban, Al-Qaeda, and Hezbollah. These rebellious spirits helped ignite his naive soul.

After graduating, he’d traveled with a few friends to Zahedan, a city in southeastern Iran and strategically located in the tri-border region of Pakistan, Iran, and Afghanistan. With finances from the drug trade and the audacious hiring of demolitions experts from Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, they created a bomb-making facility. Samad had been placed in charge of building and servicing the facility’s computer network system. They manufactured bombs within cinder bricks, and the bombs were smuggled across the borders into Afghanistan and Pakistan, with all of the deliveries timed, marked, and tracked electronically by the software Samad had created. That was Samad’s first foray into the world of terrorism.

Jihad was a central duty of all Muslims, but the definition of that word was widely misunderstood, and even Samad had been unsure about it until he’d been taught its true meaning while working at the bomb factory. Some theologians referred to jihad as the struggle within the soul or the defending of the faith from critics, or even migrating to non-Muslim lands for the purpose of spreading Islam. You were striving in the way of Allah. But was there really any form other than violent jihad? The infidels must be purged from the holy lands. They must be destroyed. They were the leaders of injustice and oppression. They were the rejecters of truth, even after it had been made clear to them. They were already destroying themselves and would bring down the rest of the world if they were not stopped.

A verse from the Qur’an was forever on the tip of Samad’s tongue: Muster against them all the men and cavalry at your disposal so that you can strike terror into the enemies of Allah …

And no group of people more accurately represented the enemies of Allah than Americans, those spoiled, spineless, godless consumers of garbage. Land of the fornicators and home of the obese. They were a threat to all people of the world.

Samad led his men closer to the farmhouse, then called to the farmer to come outside. The man, who lived alone after his wife had died and his two sons had moved to Islamabad, finally wobbled past his front door, balancing himself on a cane and squinting at Samad.

“I don’t want you here,” he said.

“I know,” Samad answered, moving up to the man. He nodded once more and thrust a long, curved blade directly into the man’s heart. As the farmer fell back, Samad caught him, even as Talwar and Niazi helped seize and carry him into the house. They lay him on the dirt floor, and he just stared at them as he continued bleeding to death.

“After he dies, we need to hide his body,” said Niazi.

“Of course,” Samad answered.

“He’ll be missed,” Talwar pointed out.

“We’ll say he left to visit his sons in the city. But that’s only if the tribesmen ask. If the Americans or the Army come, then this is our farm. Do you understand? Fleeing now will only draw more suspicion.”

They nodded.

Out near one of the goat pens they found a hole the farmer had been using to pile up the dung. They threw him in there and buried him with more dung. Samad grinned. No soldier would want to go digging through dung to find the body of some worthless farmer. Samad donned some of the old man’s clothes; then they sat back in some squeaky chairs, prepared some tea, and waited for nightfall.

Moore and his young recruit Rana had observed three men near a stand of trees on the hilltop, but these men were too low and too far away to see their faces, even with binoculars. Rana assumed that they were Taliban fighters, sentries on the perimeter, and Moore agreed. He and Rana hiked back across the foothills, down into a ravine, then up to high ground, from where Moore made a call with his Iridium satellite phone. The mountainous terrain interfered with reception if he got too deep into the cuts and ravines, but he usually picked up a clean signal from the mountaintops, where, of course, he was more vulnerable to detection. He reached the detachment commander of an ODA (Operational Detachment Alpha) team, one of the Army’s elite Special Forces groups. As a SEAL, Moore had worked alongside these boys in Afghanistan, and he had a deep respect for them, even though barbs were traded regarding which group had the most effective and deadly warriors. The rivalry was both healthy and amusing.

“Ozzy, this is Blackbeard,” said Moore, using his CIA call sign. “What’s up, brother?”

The voice on the other end belonged to Captain Dale Osbourne, a painfully young but exceedingly bright operator who’d worked with Moore on several night raids that had yielded two High-Value Targets in Afghanistan.

“Going for the hat trick tonight.”

Ozzy snorted. “You got actionable intel or just the usual bullshit?”

“Usual bullshit.”

“So you didn’t see them.”

“They’re here. We got three already.”

“Why do you assholes always do this to me?”

Moore chuckled. “’Cause you suckers like to play in the dirt. I’ve uploaded the names and pics. I want these guys.”

“What else is new?”

“Look, if it helps, we’ve picked up shell casings all over the place. Definitely a recent training ground here. Sloppy bastards didn’t clean up their mess. I need you in here tonight for the surprise party.”

“You sure Obi-Wan’s not lying his ass off?”

“I’d bet my life on it.”

“Well, holy shit, then, you got a deal. Look for us at zero dark thirty, baby. See you then.”

“Roger that. And don’t forget your gloves. You don’t want to ruin your manicure.”

“Yeah, right.”

Moore grinned and thumbed off the phone.

“What happens now?” asked Rana.

“We find a little cave, set up camp, then you’ll hear a helicopter coming.”

“Won’t that scare them off?”

Moore shook his head. “They know we’ve got satellites and Predators up there. They’ll just dig in. You watch.”

“I’m a little frightened,” Rana confessed.

“Are you kidding me? Relax. We’ll be fine.”

Moore gestured to the AK-47 slung over his shoulder and patted the old Soviet-made Makarov holstered at his side. Rana was also carrying a Makarov, and Moore had taught him how to fire and reload the sidearm.

They found a shallow cave along one of the hillsides and half buried the entrance with some larger rocks and shrubs. They remained there as night fell, and Moore began to slowly doze off. He caught himself twice falling asleep and asked Rana to remain awake and keep watch. The kid was tense anyway, and was happy to keep an eye out.

The energy bar he’d eaten earlier wasn’t agreeing with him, and it brought on some vivid dreams. He was floating on an ink-black sea, crucified against an endless expanse of darkness, and suddenly he reached out a hand and screamed, “DON’T LEAVE ME! DON’T LEAVE ME!”

He shuddered awake as something pushed over his mouth. Where the hell was he? He didn’t feel wet. He was panting, couldn’t catch his breath, realized that was because his mouth was in fact being covered by a hand.

Through the grainy darkness came Rana’s wide eyes, and he stage-whispered, “Why are you yelling? I’m not going anywhere. I’m not leaving. But you can’t yell.”

Moore nodded vigorously, and Rana slowly removed his hand. Moore bit his lip and tried to recover his breathing. “Whoa, sorry, bad dreams.”

“You thought I was going to leave.”

“I don’t know. Wait. What time is it?”

“It’s after midnight. Almost zero dark thirty.”

Moore sat up and switched on his satellite phone. A voice mail was waiting: “Hey, Blackbeard, you worthless sack of flesh. We’re mounting up. ETA your backyard, twenty minutes.”

He switched off the phone. “Listen. You hear that?”

Samad was awakened by a hand on his shoulder, and for a second or two he lost his bearings; then he remembered they were inside the farmer’s house. He sat up on the small wooden bed. “There’s a helicopter coming,” said Talwar.

“Go back to sleep.”

“Are you certain?”

“Go back to sleep. When they come, we’ll be annoyed that they woke us up.”

Samad went over to a small table and tied a rag across his face, suggesting that he’d lost an eye — not an uncommon sight in this war-torn part of the country. It was a simple disguise, and he’d learned during his days as a bomb-maker that the more simple the bomb, the idea, the plan, the greater the chance for success it had. He’d proven that theory to himself time and again. A rag. A war wound. A bitter farmer pulled from his sleep by foolish Americans. That’s all he was.

Allahu Akbar!

God was great!

The twelve-man ODA team fast-roped down from the hovering chopper as a translator addressed a few of the tribesmen who’d stumbled half-asleep from their houses to stare up and shield their eyes from the rotor wash. The translator spoke loudly via the Black Hawk’s booming public address system: “We’re here to find two men, and that is all. No one will be harmed. No shots will be fired. Please help us to find two men.” The translator repeated the message at least three times as Ozzy’s team hit the deck, one after another, then fanned out in pairs, rifles at the ready.

The drop zone was a clearing near a row of homes about two hundred meters away from the walls of the chief’s fortress, and Moore met the young Special Forces captain and his chief warrant officer in an alley between houses. They waited a few seconds until the Black Hawk banked hard and thumped away into the darkness, navigation lights flashing as its pilot steered back for the secure landing zone a few kilometers away, where they’d wait for Ozzy’s call to extract them. Landing the chopper in the village and having it remain there while the team went to work was simply too dangerous.

“You remember my sidekick, Robin?” Moore asked, directing his penlight at Rana.

Ozzy grinned. “How you doing, buddy?”

Rana frowned. “My name’s Rana, not Robin.”

“It’s a joke,” said Moore. He faced the chief warrant officer, a guy named Bobby Olsen, aka Bob-O, who took one look at Moore and pretended to scowl. “Are you the CIA puke?”

Bob-O wore the same look and asked the same question every time they got together. For some reason he took evil delight in ribbing Moore every chance he got. Moore raised his index finger and jabbed it into Bob-O’s face, about to launch his retort.

“Okay, you knuckleheads, we can stow that,” said Ozzy. He raised his brows at Moore. “It’s your party, Blackbeard. I hope you’re right.”

Ozzy’s team had been well trained in the art and science of negotiating with the tribesmen, and their fieldwork had allowed them to put classroom theory and mock scenarios into practice. They’d learned the language, had studied the customs, and even had small all-weather cheat sheets folded and stored in their breast pockets in case they were caught off guard in a social situation. They were, in their humble opinion, ambassadors of democracy, and while some might consider that notion silly or cheesy, they were the only contact with the Western world many of the tribesmen would ever have.

Moore, Rana, Ozzy, and Bob-O were about to cross a rutted dirt road lying parallel to the mud-brick homes when two salvos of automatic-weapons fire echoed off the mountains. The gunfire struck Moore breathless. Bob-O cursed.

“Raceman, who fired those shots?” Ozzy barked into the boom mike at his lips as Moore and Rana crouched beside the house.

Bob-O was on his radio at the same time, yapping at the other teams, demanding information.

More gunfire resounded, the cadence and pitch notably different. Yes, that fire belonged to Ozzy’s people, their Special Forces Combat Assault Rifles (SCARs) sending 5.56- or 7.63-millimeter responses to the enemy’s ambush. Two more volleys followed. Then a third. Then five, six, maybe seven, AK-47s answered, the gun battle about a half-dozen houses away.

Moore pricked up his ears. To fire an AK-47 you loaded your magazine, moved the selector lever off the safety, pulled back and released the charging handle, took aim, and fired — quite a few moves to fire a single shot. But if you moved the selector to the middle position, you had full auto and could lean on the trigger until you emptied the magazine. Basic gun operation, but the point was this: During any gun battle, Moore first listened for the enemy’s location and then tried to determine if the enemy was trying to conserve ammo. He heard it every time — either full auto, which often meant that each combatant had multiple magazines at his disposal, or single shot, which suggested that the enemy was trying to make every round count. Sure, this wasn’t a foolproof assessment, but more times than not his assumptions had been correct.

When a group of Taliban unleashed full automatic-weapons fire, you’d best assume the worst: They were well stocked with ammo.

Moore faced Rana and said, “Don’t do anything. Just hold tight here.”

Rana’s eyes lit up the alley. “Oh, don’t worry. I’m not going anywhere.”

“Neo and Big Dan, you get up into the hills on the south side. Raceman’s got fire over there,” Ozzy was saying as he peered around the corner, then gestured for Moore and Rana to follow him. Moore edged up beside the captain. “How’s it looking?”

“We got about eight, maybe ten, Tangos so far. I’m calling in for an Apache to give these suckers some pause.”

Ozzy was referring to the AH-64D Apache Longbow, the Army’s premier attack helicopter armed with an M230 chain gun, Hydra 70 air-to-ground rockets, and AGM-114 Hellfire or FIM-92 Stinger missiles. The mere silhouette of that helicopter summoned up horrific death in the imaginations of the Taliban who’d seen their fellow warriors shredded under its unceasing fire.

Ozzy got back on his radio and talked to the chopper pilot, requesting that he come to the village immediately and put his chain gun to work on the insurgents.

“We’ll get you back to the landing zone right now,” said Ozzy.

“You hear that?” Moore asked Rana. “We’re heading back. We’ll be okay.”

Rana clutched his Makarov to his chest. “I don’t like this.”

“I’m with you, Rana,” Moore said. “You’ll be fine.”

As the words left Moore’s lips, he flicked his gaze up toward the opposite end of the house, where a figure had just rounded the corner, and the figure’s rifle appeared in the moonlight.

Moore raised his AK-47, set to full auto, and squeezed off a four-round burst that drummed into the man’s chest, sending him thrashing and falling into the sand.

Even as that guy fell, Ozzy and Bob-O came under a hailstorm of fire from the other side of the house — at least three Taliban fighters opening up on them and driving them away from the corner. Bob-O stepped in front of Rana to protect the kid while Moore stole one more look back, then spun around and went charging up beside Ozzy.

Two houses lay on the other side of the street, and Moore noted the muzzle flashes before he hit the deck. One guy was on the flat roof, exploiting the calf-high parapet running along three sides. He fired and tucked himself back behind the stone. Another was at the back of the house, where a knee wall afforded him good cover.

And the last one stood inside the house on the left, shifting into the open window to fire, then rolling back. All three knew that the mud bricks would protect them from the enemy’s rounds.

“Rana, stay with them,” Moore told the kid. Then he crawled two more meters to get close to Ozzy. “Keep them busy. I’m circling around. I’ll start with the guy on the roof.”

“Dude, are you nuts?” asked Ozzy. “Let me frag ’em.”

Moore shook his head vigorously. “I want one alive. Give me a couple of zipper cuffs.”

Ozzy snickered in disbelief but handed over the cuffs.

Moore winked. “I’ll be right back.”

“Hey, Money,” called Rana nervously.

But Moore was already racing out of the alley. Dressed like a tribesman himself and armed with their weapons, if he were spotted, there might be a moment of pause that he’d fully exploit. He charged around two more houses, crossed the dirt road, then reached the back of the house atop which one of the Taliban fighters had carefully positioned himself. The guy had used a rickety wooden ladder, and it was during the next round of gunfire that Moore rushed up that ladder, allowing the racket to conceal his advance.

He came over the ledge and spotted the guy, kneeling down and popping up like a target in a black turban, laying down fire, then snapping back behind the parapet. Bob-O and Ozzy sent their own suppressing fire into the stone, drilling up debris and dust that rose in small clouds along the parapet.

With the Taliban’s attention fully directed ahead, he neither saw nor heard Moore’s approach. Moore took the Makarov in his hand, clutching the barrel so that the grip extended from the bottom of his fist, forming an L-shape.

Then, after taking a deep breath, Moore broke into a running leap, arcing high above his opponent, shifting into an off-beat combination of Krav Maga and his own improvisation. As the guy turned his head, catching a flash from the corner of his eye, Moore came down on him like some taloned predator, driving his knee into the man’s back and forcing the grip end of the pistol into the man’s neck, below and slightly in front of the ear. A sharp blow to the side of the neck would cause unconsciousness by shocking the carotid artery, jugular vein, and vagus nerve.

The guy fell back across the roof, and Moore withdrew the zipper cuffs from his back pocket and bound the man’s hands behind his back. Then he zipped up the guy’s feet and left him there. When he woke up, they’d have some tea and a nice conversation. For now, though, Moore descended the ladder, as once more Ozzy and Bob-O got off some suppressing fire on the other two Taliban.

Moore brushed his shoulder along the wall as he headed back around the next house, reaching the corner where, to his left and about ten meters ahead, the second Taliban fighter was hunkered down at the knee wall. He was armed with a rifle but also had a pistol holstered at his side and wore a heavy pack that Moore assumed was loaded with more magazines. Moore shuddered over the decision: The guy seemed too far away to catch silently from behind. And if Moore ran forward at the wrong angle, he could be caught by Ozzy’s or Bob-O’s fire. Getting taken out by doing something bold was one thing; doing something reckless and getting shot by his own people was to reach a level of stupidity usually reserved for adulterous politicians.

Since Moore was carrying an AK-47, if he did fire, then the third Taliban might assume that his buddy was responsible for those rounds. But then came an even better diversion: The Apache Longbow and its thundering rotors swooped down, banked hard right, then began to wheel over them. The wind and roar stole the Taliban fighter’s attention, as did the powerful spotlight that panned across the alley.

Moore raised his rifle, got off three rounds, punching the guy in the back, blood spraying. Then he whirled and took off along the wall of the next house, within which stood the last guy. Moore got down on his hands and knees and crawled beneath the side window, then came around the front of the house. Bob-O and Ozzy ceased fire, and Moore was able to position himself beneath the open window through which the last guy was firing.

At this point, yes, they could lob a grenade and finish the guy, but Moore was already an arm’s length away from the insurgent. He rolled onto his side and strained his neck to peer upward until there it was, the guy’s rifle barrel hanging above the windowsill, within reach. Moore grabbed the rifle by the upper hand guard and used it to haul himself onto his knees, just as the guy, screaming in shock, let go of the weapon and reached for his holstered pistol.

By the time he freed his weapon, Moore had thrown down the AK and leveled his Makarov. Three rounds sent the thug crashing onto the floor. Moore had used his own pistol because one of the oldest of old-school combat rules said that only as a last resort should you put your life in the hands of an enemy’s weapon.

The Apache was already leaving, called off by Ozzy.

Only the fading whomp of rotors broke across the Mana Valley. Finally, a dog barked, and then someone hollered in the distance. English.

Moore jogged back across the street and down to the end of the alley, where he met up with Ozzy and Bob-O. The stench of gunpowder was everywhere, and Moore found himself shaking with adrenaline as he crouched down.

“Nice job, Puke,” said Bob-O.

“Yeah,” breathed Moore. “Took one alive up on the roof. I get to interrogate him.”

“We killed four more, but the rest fell back into the mountains,” said Ozzy, cupping one hand over his ear to listen to the reports from his men. “We lost them.”

“I want to talk to Old Man Shah, let him lie to my face about this,” snapped Moore, referring to the chief of the village.

“Me, too,” said Ozzy, showing his teeth.

Moore drifted over to Rana, who was still sitting in the alley, knees pulled in to his chest. “Hey. You okay?”

“No.”

“It’s over now.” Moore proffered his hand, and the young man took it.

While Ozzy’s team policed the bodies of the Taliban who’d been killed (and fetched the prisoner Moore had bound up on the roof), Moore, Ozzy, Bob-O, and Rana reached the mud-brick fort. The rectangular buildings were surrounded by brick walls rising about two meters and a large wooden gate before which now stood a half-dozen guards. Ozzy told one of the guards that the chief of the Shawal tribes needed to speak with them immediately. The guard went back to the house, while Moore and the others waited.

Chief Habib Shah and one of his most trusted clerics, Aiman Salahuddin, stormed out of the gate. Shah was an imposing man of six-foot-five or so, with a large black turban and a beard that seemed more like a bundle of black wires than hair. His green eyes flashed in Ozzy’s light. The cleric was much older, perhaps seventy, with an ivory-white beard, hunched back, and barely five feet tall. He kept shaking his head at Moore and the others, as though he could will them away.

“Let me do the talking,” Moore told Ozzy.

“Yeah, because I’m about to tell him off.”

“Hello, Chief,” said Moore.

“What are you doing here?” the chief demanded.

Moore tried to temper his anger. He tried, all right. And failed. “Before we were attacked by the Taliban, we came in peace, looking for these two men.” Moore shoved the pictures into the chief’s hand.

The man gave the photos a perfunctory glance and shrugged. “I’ve never seen them before. If anyone in this village is helping the Taliban, he will suffer my wrath.”

Ozzy snorted. “Chief, did you know the Taliban were here?”

“Of course not. How many times have I told you this, Captain?”

“I think this might be the fourth. You keep telling me you don’t help terrorists, and we keep finding them here. I just can’t understand that. Do they accidentally drop down out of the sky?” Ozzy had clearly damned to hell the “art and science” of negotiation.

“Chief, we’d like to continue our search with your help,” said Moore. “Just a few men.”

“I’m sorry, but my men are very busy protecting this village.”

“Let’s go,” said Ozzy, turning away and marching off with Bob-O behind him.

The cleric stepped up to Moore and spoke in English: “Go home with your friends.”

“You’re helping the wrong people,” Rana suddenly blurted out.

Moore glared at the young man and put a finger to his lips.

The cleric narrowed his eyes at Rana. “Young man, it’s you who are very much mistaken.”

It took another two hours for Ozzy’s Special Forces team to comb through the village and surrounding farmhouses, ever wary of another attack.

In the meantime, Moore questioned the man they had captured. “I’ll say it again, what’s your name?”

“Kill me.”

“What’s your name? Where are you from? Have you seen these guys?” He shoved the pictures into the man’s face.

“Kill me.”

And it went on like that, over and over, until Moore got so frustrated that he gave up before he said something he shouldn’t have. Moore’s CIA colleagues would take over the questioning anyway. Might take a week or more to crack this guy.

When Ozzy’s team finally returned to the helicopter, Moore debriefed them before they took off.

“This farmhouse right here,” Moore said, pointing to the home on a satellite photograph. “It’s pretty far back. Anyone get it?”

“We did,” said Bob-O. “Old farmer with one eye there. Couple of sons. Not happy to see us. They didn’t fit the description of your guys.”

“So there it is,” said Ozzy.

Moore shook his head. “My guys are here. They’re probably watching us right now.”

“And what’re we going to do about it?” asked Ozzy, throwing up his hands. “We’re between a rock and, well, another rock. And some mountains. And some pissed-off tribesmen. And some dead Taliban. Better tell your boys back home to ship these folks some Walmart gift cards for their trouble.”

The surprise visit wasn’t a total loss. Moore’s bosses had been unsure which way the chief’s loyalty was swinging these days, and now they knew. To believe that not a single person in this part of Shawal had seen Moore’s targets was ridiculous. They’d seen them, talked to them, perhaps trained and eaten with them. Moore had experienced this time and again, and for now there was nothing else he could do but leave behind the photographs and ask for the chief’s assistance.

“Was the mission a failure?” asked Rana.

“Not a failure,” answered Moore. “We’ve just been delayed by some unforeseen weather.”

“Weather?”

Moore snorted. “Yeah. A big shit storm of silence.”

Rana shook his head. “I don’t know why they choose to help the Taliban.”

“You should know that. They get more from the Taliban than anyone else,” Moore told the young man. “They’re opportunists. They have to be. Look where they live.”

“You think we’ll ever catch those guys?”

“We will. It just takes time. And that’s my problem, isn’t it?”

“Perhaps Wazir will have some news about your missing friend.”

Moore sighed deeply in frustration. “That’d work. Either way, I’ll be out of here by tomorrow night, and I just wish I could have some vengeance for what they did to the colonel and his family. If those guys just walk away, that’ll never stop burning me.” They climbed aboard the chopper and within ten minutes were in the air.

Before they even landed in Kabul, Moore saw that he’d received a phone call from Slater.

The Mexican guy in the photograph, Tito Llamas, a lieutenant in the Juárez Cartel, had turned up in a car trunk with a bullet in his head. Likewise, Khodai’s associates who’d been photographed with Llamas had all been murdered. The only guys in that picture who hadn’t turned up dead thus far were the Taliban. Moore needed to get back to Islamabad ASAP. He wanted to talk to the local police about Llamas and see if there were any other leads he could gather. He thought he might buy himself a little more time by “accidentally” missing his flight back home.

He didn’t reach the city until morning, and he told Rana to go home and get some sleep. He went to the police station, met with the detectives there, and positively identified Tito Llamas’s body. The cartel member had been carrying falsified documentation, including a fake passport, and Moore was able to share with the local police what data the Agency had on the cartel member. Needless to say, those detectives were grateful.

A surprise e-mail from the old man Wazir was very welcome — that was until Moore read its contents.

The two other Taliban in the photograph that Wazir had mentioned were unimportant and were actually Punjabi Taliban, named for their roots in southern Punjab. They were distinguishable because they did not speak Pashto and traditionally had ties with groups such as Jaish-e-Mohammed. The Punjabi Taliban now operated out of North Waziristan and fought alongside Pakistani Taliban and Al-Qaeda.

But that history lesson wasn’t the important part of the e-mail. Wazir had found the men, but both had been murdered. He said the Taliban had discovered their security leak and had killed everyone associated with it …except Moore, of course, and he was no doubt at the top of their hit list.

Maybe it was time to go home.