Combat Ops

TWENTY-EIGHT

While we had been considering a major offensive against the Taliban, they had, unsurprisingly, been thinking about the same thing. And unbeknownst to us, they had planned to launch their attack only a few hours after I’d taken my team into the mountains. Call that ironic and interesting timing.

What gave them pause, however, was our placement of the Bradleys in the defile and the firing of that flare. My simple diversion had changed the enemy’s entire battle plan. We later learned that they thought we’d been tipped off, and that had sent Zahed into a state of panic. From what we could gather, he launched a halfhearted offensive, committing only about half of his troops to the fight, while pulling the rest back to Sangsar to help ensure his escape.

But I was unaware of those facts as Hila took me through the concrete pipe. Had I known that Sangsar would be swarming with at least two, maybe three hundred of Zahed’s best trained fighters, I might’ve given the decision more thought.

But I was blithely unaware.

And Hila had assured me that the fat man kept only two or three guards around him at all times.

Not three hundred.

Far ahead, my light finally picked out the edge of the pipe, which led directly into another tunnel, one only about three meters long.

The air was filled by other scents I couldn’t quite discern: incense, cooked meat, burning candles, something. And then I paused, glanced back at Hila. “Here?”

She raised an index finger, and her gaze turned up.

I nodded. The concrete pipe had led to a tunnel that I believed emptied into a basement.

With a gesture for her to remain behind me, I shifted farther into the tunnel, reached the edge, then hunkered down and slowly lifted my penlight.

“Whoa…” The word escaped my lips before I could stop it.

We were in a basement all right, a huge one. Fifteen-foot-high concrete walls rose around the perimeter, and I estimated the depth at more than one hundred feet. The place had been converted into a subterranean warehouse, with long rows of opium bricks, crates of ammunition and guns, and more MREs, along with dozens and dozens of wooden boxes whose contents were a mystery.

I shifted to one box and opened it to find a bag labeled in English: ammonium nitrate fertilizer. I snorted. Fertilizer for making bombs.

At the back of the basement rose a wooden staircase leading up to a door half open, flickering light wedging through the crack. When I looked back, Hila was right behind me. She hadn’t held back like I’d asked.

I glanced up at the wooden planks and ceiling, listened as people shifted and creaked overhead. Hila’s breathing grew louder. I leaned down, grabbed her wrist, and led her along a row of opium bricks, then crouched down at the back.

“Zahed is up there?”

She nodded.

I thought of the Predator, of somehow getting a signal off to that controller, getting him to bomb the whole place while we escaped back through the drainage pipe. Simple. Clean. The only problem was I couldn’t confirm that the fat man was up there. I wanted to see him for myself.

“Is it a house up there?”

“Yes. He stays in a big room.”

“All right.” I didn’t think I could get more out of her, and she wanted to come with me.

“No,” I told her. “You stay here, be quiet, and wait for me… okay?”

She looked about to cry.

“Please…”

“Okay.”

As I stole away, shifting quickly from row to row of crates and opium bricks, I asked myself, What the hell am I doing?

The door at the top of the staircase creaked open, and two Taliban fighters came charging down the stairs with a purpose. I tucked myself deeper into the crates and just watched them jog through the basement and head straight into the tunnel. I looked far down the row at Hila, hidden between two crates now. She’d heard them but she didn’t move. Perfect. That kid had a lot of courage, all right.

I gave myself a once-over and tightened the shemagh around my face. I was about to step forward and mount the staircase when I thought better of it and shifted back to my spot. I was panting. What the hell had just happened? Had I just chickened out? I wasn’t sure. I dug into my pocket, ripped down the shemagh again, then donned the Cross-Com and gave the verbal command to activate the device.

The monocle flickered, came to life, but the HUD showed no satellite signal. I was still too deep. I removed and pocketed the unit, then took several long breaths. I checked my magazine, my second pistol with silencer, was ready to rip open my shirt to expose the web gear beneath and the half dozen grenades I carried.

Once more, the door above opened, and three more Taliban fighters came running down and dashed across the basement, on their way toward the tunnel.

I kept telling myself that if I waited any longer, the fat man would be gone. Either he was up there right now packing his bags, or maybe it was all for naught. Maybe he’d already left.

Well, there was only one way to find out.

My arm was stinging again as I hustled up the stairs — a reminder that getting killed was going to hurt. Oh, yeah. I shivered and passed through the door.

A long hallway stretched out in both directions. A living room lay to the left, with tables, chairs, even a very Western-looking leather sofa and flat-screen TV mounted to the wall, all very posh despite the mud-brick walls. Candles burning from wall sconces lit the pathway to my right, where a large kitchen with bar and stools, again very Western, was set up beside another eating area.

Someone shouted behind me. I turned to him, a guy about my age with a salt-and-pepper beard.

He asked me something, then asked me again.

I shook my head. He shoved me out of the way and jogged down the hall. I ran after him. “Wait!” I cried in Pashto. “I need to see Zahed!”

But he kept running. I slowed, reached the edge of the kitchen as something or someone moved behind me. I whirled.

Hila stood there, pistol in one hand.

“I told you to stay down there!” I cried through a whisper.

“Come on,” she said. “Let’s go see Zahed! I know where!”

She grabbed my wrist and tugged me toward the hallway ahead.

I grabbed her by the mouth, pulled her into the kitchen, then ducked down beneath the bar and stools. I rolled her over, my hand still wrapped around her mouth, and said, “If they see you, they’ll kill you.”

She didn’t move.

I slowly removed my hand.

“You have to go back,” I told her, pointing down toward the basement.

She shook her head.

I gestured to my eyes. “If they see you, they will kill you.”

“I know what you said. I don’t care. I am dead already. To my family. To everyone who knows me. Let me help you. Let me get revenge against Zahed.”

The decision pained me. If I dragged her along, the second we were spotted we’d be accosted, maybe even shot. I could concoct some story, but I didn’t like that. I didn’t want her around. I couldn’t bear to see her get killed, not after what had already happened to her.

I told myself that if I could save her, maybe it all meant something. Maybe I wasn’t just a puppet whose strings were being pulled by asinine politicians.

But she could save me time, get me to Zahed more quickly. I would have to comb through the entire house. She seemed to know exactly where he’d be.

She made the decision for me. I released my grip on her at the sound of approaching men, and she bolted around the bar before I could grab her.

The men passed, heading toward the basement door, and she ran out into the hall, waving to me.

So it was the middle of the night in a small town deep in the desert of southern Afghanistan, and I was chasing a teenaged girl carrying a pistol through a terrorist’s house. If I started a conversation like that, would you believe me? I wouldn’t believe me.

Hila ran all the way down the hall, made an abrupt right-hand turn, and when I followed, I found her stopped dead, raising her pistol at another man coming toward us.

She shot him right in the heart. As he fell, she ran past him, down another hall with doors lining both sides. I was indeed crazy. I’d turned the girl into a cold-blooded killer; then again, maybe Zahed was responsible for that.

As we ran I couldn’t help but realize this wasn’t a house but a mansion, perhaps the biggest place in the entire town, although you wouldn’t know it when looking on Sangsar from above. The buildings were so closely situated that it was hard to tell where one ended and the other began. The doors here were ornate as well, heavy oak, deeply carved. The fat man had spared no expense.

Hila reached a door at the end, pushed through it, and ran inside.

I called after her, reached the doorway, turned into the room, and found her at the far end, running toward a window, a real window, which was rare to find.

We were in a massive bedroom with a four-poster bed, heavy furniture, and yet another flat-screen TV. It was like a room in a five-star hotel that had been built in a neighborhood of utter squalor. Very surreal. I’m sure parts of the village didn’t have electricity, but Zahed sure did; either that or he ran his TV off a generator.

I rushed to the window to find Hila pointing. “There!” she cried. “There!”

Across a long, tree-lined courtyard, past fig trees and a wall covered in rose bushes, were the silhouettes of three men standing near a wrought-iron gate.

One of them had to be the fat man. He was tall, six feet five at least, and huge, more than four hundred pounds, I guessed.

Stacks of luggage were lined on the walkway beside them. They were waiting to be picked up.

Damn it. I tried the window. Locked. I couldn’t find a way to open it! I turned back—

And when I did, a man was standing in the door with his AK pointed at us. “What’re you doing?” he asked in Pashto.

I shifted in front of Hila but didn’t raise my rifle. “The infidels come from the basement,” I tried to say.

The man took a step forward and frowned. Aw, no. I must’ve made a mistake. Maybe I’d told him his mother was a whore, I wasn’t sure.

Before I could react, another man jogged up beside the first and began screaming and tugging at his buddy.

I stole a look out the window.

A car had rolled up outside.

The first guy shouted at me again. I threw myself to one side, raised my rifle, and fired a salvo into him and his buddy, no silencer, just me and the AK dishing out lead loud and clear. Both went down, but the first guy had started firing—

And Hila let out a scream.

As both men fell, I clambered up, shouldered my rifle, and rushed to Hila, who’d fallen onto her back and was clutching her side. I immediately pulled away her shirt and saw that a round had pierced the right side of her abdomen, no exit wound.

I chanced another look out the window. The wrought-iron gate was open. The three men were fighting over something, their voices raised as they rushed to get in the car while two others hurried to load the luggage.

“This hurts,” said Hila. “Please. Can you help?”

“It’s not that bad. You’ll be okay.”

She clutched my hand. “Please. I need help.”

“But I need to go,” I told her. “He’s outside. He’s going to get away…”

She grabbed my hand even tighter as tears welled in her eyes.