now you’ve gone and gotten yourself captured. Are you
having a bad day or what? What the hell happened to you?
Don’t you remember what your mom told you? You’re des-
tined for some great things . . . so I have to ask you, son,
what the hell happened?
My eyes were brimming with tears. I kept calling
myself a fool and wanted to apologize to Treehorn. He
was going to die because I’d made poor decisions. All of
the axioms of leadership didn’t mean a goddamned
thing to me anymore. The Special Forces creed was a
joke. I had a sack over my head and was being driven to
hell, where a fat man lounged near a pool of lava, sipping
on tea.
I started reflecting on everything: my pathetic rela-
tionships with women, how I’d tortured poor Kristen for
so many years, how she kept lying to me and saying this
was the exact relationship she wanted, long-distance and
infrequent, when I could see the ache in her eyes. What
kind of a life had I made for myself? Was I truly happy?
Were all the missions and the sacrifices really worth it?
Like I said, I was really feeling sorry for myself.
Any operator who tells you he has no doubts, that he
256 GH OS T RE CON
is fully committed to the choices he’s made and the sac-
rifices to come, is, in my humble opinion, lying. There
will always be the doubts, and they were, at that
moment, all I had left.
I’d estimated the car’s speed at about thirty miles per
hour and had counted off about thirty minutes, give or
take, so I figured we’d gone about fifteen miles when the
car came to an abrupt halt, the dirt hissing beneath the
tires.
More chatter from the driver and passenger. The zip-
per cuffs were digging into my wrists and my shoulders
were on fire by the time they opened the door and
yanked us from the car. We were guided about twenty
steps away, and then one man said, “Stay.”
“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.
CO MB AT O P S
257
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.
258 GH OS T RE CON
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 Tree-
horn.
“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.
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259
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 trans-
lated.
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