“Boss, I say we make a break for it. I’d rather get shot trying to escape.”
“Relax, brother. We’re going to be okay.”
“Dude! We’re not okay!” he shouted.
That drew the reaction of the men. I heard a thump, Treehorn groaned, and I hollered, “Treehorn, you okay? You okay?”
“Yeah.” He gasped. “They just whacked me!”
The wind was tugging at my loose shirt and driving the sack deeper into my face.
We weren’t in the village, and we hadn’t crossed the mountains. I was sure of that. We would’ve felt the mountain road, heard the engine groaning. The road had been relatively flat.
Suddenly, the sack was ripped off my head, and I was blinded by the glare. It took a few seconds of squinting for my eyes to fully adjust.
Treehorn stood next to me, squinting as well.
They’d taken us west down A01, the main road, to a little truck stop area where several tractor-trailers were lined up. I wasn’t sure if the place was a gas station or what, but I definitely knew we’d headed west because off to the east I could see Kandahar in the far distance and a plane taking off from the airport.
Without a word, the two men got back in the car, threw it in gear, and left us standing there on the side of the road, our hands still cuffed.
“What the hell?” Treehorn gasped.
I whirled, faced the truck stop. A small, blue booth stood near several large trees whose limbs were being thrashed in the wind. I wondered if that was a phone booth, so I gestured with my head and Treehorn and I started walking over there, the wind kicking sand in our faces.
From behind several of the parked trailers came a half dozen more gunmen, AK-47s swinging to come to bear on us.
“Oh, great,” I said. “And I just thought they were playing a prank on us.”
“Remind me to laugh later,” said Treehorn. “Or at least before they kill us.”
From behind the gunmen came a familiar face that left me with a deep frown.
Shilmani.
And then, from behind him, came Kundi, the village headman and land owner, shaking his head at us.
I called to Shilmani and quickened my step toward them. “What the hell is this?” I added.
“Please, Scott, it is very unexpected.” Shilmani’s eyes were bloodshot, and blood was dripping from one of his nostrils.
“You guys better release us right now,” said Treehorn.
“That’s right,” I said.
“No,” said Kundi, shaking his finger at us. “We talk first. Right here.”
“Shilmani, tell this asshole if he wanted a meeting, he could have asked for it.”
Shilmani glanced away, and, his voice cracking, said, “Burki is dead.”
My mouth fell open. “Say again?”
“Burki was just shot and killed. Right after you left. My cousin betrayed us. He told Kundi everything — about us hiring you to kill Zahed.”
I remembered the conversation I’d had with the old man that Bronco had taken me to see:
“Kundi is your son, and your son negotiates with the Taliban.”
“Of course. I fought with Zahed’s father many years ago. We are both Mujahadeen. The guns we used were given to us by you Americans.”
Of course Kundi was loyal to Zahed. Like father, like son.
I widened my eyes on Kundi and started toward him. The half dozen guards he’d brought along cut me off — but what was I going to do with my hands still cuffed? “You killed Burki?” I asked the old man. “Wasn’t he your friend?”
Shilmani translated. Kundi threw up his hands and rattled off something about betrayal. I thought I caught a word of that.
“He says Burki was altering the deal on the water. It was not Zahed who had changed the terms of the agreement.”
“Do you believe that?” I asked Shilmani.
“No, I do not. I was there when Zahed’s man came and told us about the new terms.”
“Tell him to let us go. Tell him if doesn’t let us go, I’m going to make a few phone calls, and there’s going to be a lot of trouble. And we’ll cut off access to the well, that’s for sure…”
Shilmani took a deep breath and reluctantly translated.
Kundi’s eyes grew wide and maniacal. He marched up to me, got in my face, his crooked yellow teeth bared. “You… go home…”
I felt like saying, Let me go and I’ll catch the next flight out. To hell with the politics, this place, the mission. To hell with it all.
But the bastard challenged me, managed to capture me, even, and I wasn’t going to take any more of his bullshit. So what I did say was, “I’m not going home until I either capture or kill your good buddy Zahed.”
Shilmani translated.
Kundi stepped back. The gunmen lined up.
“What the hell, boss?” groaned Treehorn. “Are they getting ready to shoot us?”
Kundi heard the whomping first. He whirled around, lifted a hand to his brow.
Then I heard it. We all did. Two choppers: a Blackhawk and an Apache screaming in from the east, from Kandahar.
“We’re late getting back,” I told Treehorn.
“Good deal,” he said.
Suddenly, Kundi waved for his men to retreat behind the trailers. They ran off, as did the old man, who was shouting back at Shilmani.
“I’m sorry, Scott. Really. I am,” cried Shilmani. “And Scott, maybe you can help me! They took my daughter! They took my daughter!”
With that Shilmani bolted off.
It was interesting trying to explain to the Blackhawk crew how we’d managed to get our sorry asses kidnapped, and I called ahead to Harruck to have someone pick up our Hummer — that was, providing the villagers hadn’t set it on fire. Turned out they hadn’t.
During the chopper ride back to the FOB, Gordon contacted me to say that while they’d been scanning for Green Force Tracker Chips they’d picked up a brief signal from Warris’s GFTC. Intel indicated that he was being moved, and Gordon had pinpointed the entrance to yet another tunnel complex.
It was time to make our move for a rescue.
“So you got yourself taken prisoner,” said Harruck, producing two glasses for us. It was going to be straight whiskey this time and it was barely past noon.
We sat in his office, me still rubbing my wrists, him intent on filling our drinks to the brim.
I took mine and sucked it down like a man who’d found an oasis. The burn nearly made my eyes roll back. After a long exhale, I said, “I’m so over this.”
“You and me both.”
“It’s tearing us up. All of us.”
“It is. You ever think it’d be like this? I mean when you first joined up?”
“Oh, yeah, of course. I was totally stoked about the futility of war.”
He snorted. “Me, too.”
“But maybe now we’ve caught a break.”
That drew his frown. “Really? You know they’ve gone back on the TV. They’re going to kill Warris if we don’t meet their demands in twenty-four hours. Keating has stepped up plans for the offensive.”
“And you know what’s going to happen,” I said. “If I don’t get out there, they’re going to kill Warris, they’ll launch that offensive, and the media will report on all the innocents who were killed. W’ell be the bad guys all over again.”
The XO knocked, then entered. “Sir, the governor’s back. He’s screaming again.”
“Tell him to fuck off,” snapped Harruck.
I laughed under my breath.
“Tell him I’m in a meeting,” Harruck corrected.
“Okay, and Dr. Anderson is outside, too. She says all the workers just walked off the job. They just… left…”