22
Medicia Oltre Frontiere Compound
Afghanistan–Pakistan border
7 January
Two hours later, Pearce stumbled out of the steep tree line, back on the Pakistani side of the border. Bathed in sweat, thighs burning, breathless, he scanned the snowy path just beyond the clinic entrance.
Not good.
The blue steel gate was battered and twisted on the lock side, rammed open by something heavy and hostile.
Pearce dropped to the deck in a puff of snow just as a Pakistani soldier stepped into the open gate area. He wore heavy-weather camouflage gear and carried a G3 rifle.
Just like the rifles that Khalid’s men carried.
That was enough confirmation for Pearce. The Pakistanis, or at least some of them, were helping the Taliban. With allies like that, how could we possibly fail to win this war? he thought.
Assholes.
The soldier scanned the road carelessly, then stepped back inside the gate, out of view. Pearce dashed across the road, as far away from the sight line of the gate entrance as he could get. A stand of pine trees marched up to the high stone walls of the compound. Pearce used them as cover. When he reached the wall, he listened. He counted three voices in the little courtyard, but heard more voices shouting from inside the clinic.
Pearce slung his rifle over his back, pulled himself up silently onto a low-hanging branch, then climbed to another just above. He could barely feel his hands. His gloves were still in the clinic. Up in the second branch he had a view just clearing the wall. He saw three men directly below him, sheltering themselves against the chilling breeze behind a heavy-duty truck parked near the wall, shivering and smoking cigarettes.
Pearce considered his tactical disadvantages. He was outnumbered and outgunned here in the courtyard, an unknown number of bogeys were in the clinic, and Cella was nowhere in sight. No grenades, no flash bangs. Could he evade detection and make his way into the clinic without endangering Cella’s life, or Daud’s? He tried to formulate a plan, but his mind was numb with fatigue and clouded by an agonizing headache brought on by the frozen air and lack of food.
A gunshot burst inside the clinic. Cella screamed.
Pearce pulled his knife and leaped over the wall.
So much for planning.
The Pakistani officer held a fistful of Cella’s hair in his powerful grip and pointed a pistol in her face, inches from his.
“CIA! WHERE IS CIA?!” he screamed in broken English.
“I… don’t… know!” Cella cried.
“Here,” Pearce said.
The officer whirled around, still clutching Cella by the hair, the other hand pointing the gun toward Pearce. He fired.
Too late, by a breath. Pearce had fired first, kneeling.
The pistol round cracked on the doorframe just above Pearce’s head as the Pakistani’s throat blossomed in petals of blood and meat. His hands went limp as his spinal cord severed from the base of his skull, freeing Cella, dropping the gun, dead before he crashed to the floor.
Cella stood frozen in a half crouch, trembling.
Pearce ran to her and threw an arm around her. She wrapped both arms around his neck, clinging to him like a life raft.
“The others?” he whispered.
She raised her face. It was smeared in tears and snot. Her left eye was blue and swollen shut. She pointed at the women’s clinic. “Five of them.” She noticed that Pearce was bathed in wet blood.
She gasped. “Where are you hit?”
He shook his head: I’m not.
He shoved her against the far wall, trying to get her out of sight of the doorway, just in case. “Wait here,” he whispered.
“Stay with me. They will be waiting for you.”
He shook his head again. “They think their buddy just shot you.”
Pearce ducked back out the door in a low crouch as Cella raced over to Daud’s bed. The Afghani’s brains were spattered against the far wall and he was bled out all over his pillow. Too late, she knew. But something in her had hoped.
She suddenly realized she was sticky with blood, too. The blood that was on Pearce.
Panicked shouts rang out on the other side of the wall.
So did five muffled gunshots. Cella flinched.
Seconds later, Pearce raced back through the doorway.
“The women were all dead. I’m sorry,” Pearce said.
Cella buried her swollen face in her hands and sobbed.
Pearce glanced at Daud’s bed, then the other two. The boy and the old man were shot through the head as well.
“Was that the asshole that killed Vittorio? Marwat?” He nodded at the corpse on the floor lying in the spreading pool of blood.
All Cella could do was nod.
“We need to scoot.”
“Where will we go?”
“The only place we can.”
23
Medicia Oltre Frontiere Compound
Afghanistan–Pakistan border
7 January
They changed out of their bloody clothes and layered up as warmly as possible, careful to avoid any military-supplied gear, Italian or otherwise. Over Cella’s protests, Pearce allowed her just one backpack stuffed with whatever she could fit in it, along with her passport. She tossed him Vittorio’s.
“What’s this for?”
“It might prove useful.”
Pearce opened it, examined the photo. “I hardly look like him, and I don’t speak Italian.”
“With that beard, who can tell? I can always vouch for you.” She forced a grim smile. “Just keep your mouth shut.”
The only real food Cella had on hand was a loaf of bread and two chocolate bars. Pearce thought about doing the Rocky thing and cracking open the eggs into a glass and swallowing them whole, but he thought the consistency would be like snot so he passed. But while Cella was pulling together her papers, Pearce found a cabinet full of plastic bags labeled Razione Viveri Speciale da Combattimento. It wasn’t hard for him to figure out what they were, but he was glad the Italian combat rations were also dual labeled in English—probably a NATO requirement. He pulled out several bags with the most appealing contents, including ones marked Cordiale/Bevanda Alcolica, because Pearce knew that every now and then a good belt might come in handy.
God bless the Italians.
The last thing Pearce asked Cella to do was the worst, but to his surprise, she agreed without protest. They dragged the dead bodies from outside into the clinic and flooded the floors of both clinics with kerosene from the heaters. He then bundled her up into the Pakistani army truck. The vehicle was clearly marked with Pakistani flags on the hood and the sides. The U.S. Army wouldn’t dare fire on it if they came on this side of the border, which, as far as Pearce knew, they wouldn’t. After pulling the vehicle out past the broken gate, he ran back in and set fire to stacks of blankets soaked in kerosene, but not before snagging one of the dead soldier’s field caps. By the time the truck lumbered away from the clinic it was engulfed in flames.
“Now what?” Cella asked.
“We head south.”
Kabul was less than two hundred miles directly north from the clinic, but Pearce knew he couldn’t drive straight there. Khalid’s men, the U.S. Army, and God knows who else were likely still searching for him up the road just over the border. His first concern was Cella’s safety, and the best he could do was get her to the Italian embassy in Islamabad. But how?