rural areas and had encountered sophisticated and sim-
ple people, I was haunted by his accusations that the
Taliban had exploited their children—
And all the more so because of what lay before us in
that dimly lit room.
T WO
Neither Ramirez nor I had any children, so there wasn’t
that moment when we projected our own kids into the
situation before us.
But I’m certain that what we felt was equally shock-
ing and painful.
“Oh my God,” Ramirez said with a gasp.
Before we could take another step, footfalls echoed
behind us, and a male voice came in a stage whisper,
though I couldn’t discern the exact words.
I turned, crouched, lifted my rifle, and came face to
face with a Taliban soldier, his AK swinging into the
room. My rounds drove him back into the opposite wall,
where he shrank, leaving a blood trail on the wall above
him. Oddly, he was still alive as he tipped onto one side
CO MB AT O P S
19
and was muttering something, even as a second guy
rounded the corner.
My two rounds missed him and chewed into the
stone. He ducked back round the corner. I blamed my
error on the shadows and not my dependence on the
Cross-Com’s targeting system. As I rationalized away
the failure, a grenade thumped across the floor, rolled
toward me, and bounced off the leg of the guy I had just
killed.
Ramirez, who’d seen the grenade, too, lifted his
voice, but I was already on it, seizing the metal bomb
and lobbing it back up the hallway, only two seconds
before it exploded. Ramirez and I were just turning our
backs to the doorway when the debris cloud showered
us, pieces of stone stinging our arms and legs and
thumping off the Dragon Skin torso armor beneath our
utilities.
We turned back for the hall.
And my breath vanished at the sound of a second
metallic thump. This grenade hit the dead guy’s boot
and rolled once more directly into the room.
Ramirez was on it like a New York Yankees shortstop.
He scooped up the grenade, whirled toward the open
window, and fired it back outside. We rolled once more
as the explosion resounded and the walls shifted and
cracked.
I’d had enough of that and let my rifle lead me back
into the hallway. I charged forward and found the
remaining guy withdrawing yet a third grenade from an
old leather pouch. He looked up, dropped his jaw, and
20
GH OS T RE C O N
shuddered as my salvo made him appear as though he’d
grabbed a live wire. He fell back onto his side.
I stood over him, fighting for breath, angry that
they’d kept coming at us, wondering if he’d been one of
the guys who’d perpetrated the acts we imagined had
gone on in that room. I returned to Ramirez, who’d
gone over to the pool table. That’s right, a pool table.
But they hadn’t been playing pool.
A girl no more than thirteen or fourteen lay nude and
seemingly crucified across the table, arms and legs bound
by heavy cord to the table’s legs. Ramirez was checking
for a carotid pulse. He glanced back at me and whis-
pered, “She looks drugged, but she’s still alive.”
I tugged free my bowie knife from its calf sheath and,
gritting my teeth, cursed and cut free the cords. Then I
ran back and ripped the shirt off the dead guy just out-
side the door. Neither of us said a word until Ramirez
lifted her over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry, and I
draped the shirt over her nude body.
I just shook my head and led the way back out.
In the courtyard, I swept the corners, remained wary
of the rooftops, and reached out with all of my senses,
guiding us back toward the gate without the help of the
Cross-Com. Women were wailing somewhere behind
one of the buildings, and the stench of gunpowder had
thickened even more on the breeze.
Gunfire sounded from somewhere behind me, and
the next thing I knew I was lying flat on my face. Before
Ramirez could turn, the girl still draped over his shoul-
der, an insurgent rushed from the house.
CO MB AT O P S
21
The guy took two, maybe three more steps before
thunder echoed from the mountain overlooking the
town. I gaped as part of the man’s head exploded and
arced across the yard. The rest of him collapsed in a dust
cloud.
Treehorn was earning his place on the team.
“Captain, you all right?” cried Ramirez.
I sat up. “I should’ve seen that guy. Damn it.”
“No way. He was tucked in good.” Ramirez crossed
around to view my back. “He got you, but the armor
took it good. Nice . . .”
“And off we go,” I said with a groan as I dragged
myself to my feet. I remembered the Cypher drone,
darted over to it, and tucked the shattered UFO under
my arm.
We hustled around the main perimeter wall, these
barriers common in many of the towns and not unlike
the medieval curtain walls that helped protect a castle.
It took another ten minutes before we reached the
edge of the town, then made our dash up a dirt road ris-
ing up through the talus and scree and into the canyons.
The gunfire had kept most of the locals inside, and what
Taliban were left had fled because they never knew how
many more infidels were coming.
We met up with Marcus Brown and Alex Nolan some
ten minutes after that, and Ramirez handed off the girl
to Nolan, who immediately dug into his medic’s kit to
see if he could get her to regain consciousness.
“Any sign of Zahed?” I asked Brown.
Despite being a rich kid from Chicago, he spoke and
22
GH OS T RE C O N
acted like a hardcore seasoned grunt. “Nah, nothing.
What the hell happened?”
I wished I could give the big guy a definitive answer.
“Our boy got tipped off. And someone took out our
Cross-Com and the drone. Somehow. I can’t believe it
was them.” I handed the drone to him, and he stowed it
in his backpack.
“So who did this?” he asked. “Our own people? Why?”
I just shook my head.
Brown’s dark face screwed up into a deeper knot. He
cursed. I seconded his curse. Ramirez joined the four-
letter-word fest.
Three more operators—Matt Beasley, Bo Jenkins,
and John Hume—arrived a few minutes after with three
prisoners in tow, their hands bound behind their backs
with zipper cuffs.
I nodded appreciatively. “Nice work, gentlemen.”
“Yeah, but no big fish, sir,” said Hume. “Just guppies.”
“I hear that.”
Treehorn ascended from his sniper’s perch and joined
us, fully out of breath. “Guess I blew the whistle a little
too soon,” he admitted.
I was about to say something, but my frustration was
already working its way into my fists. I walked over,
grabbed the nearest Taliban guy by the throat, and, in
Pashto, asked him what had happened to Zahed.
His eyes bulged, and his foul breath came at me from
between rows of broken and blackening teeth.