The van rammed the pickup broadside and crumpled its passenger door, crushing the Talib in the passenger seat instantly. The impact tossed Snyder and Armstrong against their seat belts, which gave a few inches and then tightened and pulled them back. The van’s engine block was shoved backward, toward Snyder, as his seat popped forward, forcing his left leg up and out. The engine rammed Snyder’s leg and snapped his tibia and fibula as cleanly as wishbones.
As Snyder screamed, the driver of the pickup opened the door and ran through the brush, down the side of the hill, toward Mingora. Armstrong lifted his pistol and shot through the front windshield at him but didn’t get him.
Armstrong laid a hand on Snyder’s shoulder. “You okay.”
“I can’t move, Major. My leg.”
Armstrong looked down at Snyder’s leg, the ankle curled back under the calf in a pose even the best yoga instructor couldn’t have managed. Wounded Warrior Six. “We’ll get you out.”
“Yessir.”
Armstrong tried to pop his door open, but the frame of the Mitsubishi was bowed and the door wouldn’t come loose. He wriggled out the back of the van, the laptop in hand, as tendrils of smoke began to rise from the front of the Mitsubishi. Snyder shot out his window to get air. He hung his head out the side of the truck and coughed.
Maggs ran toward the pickup as the Talib in the bed of the truck came to his knees. The Talib’s AK had gotten caught behind him. He scrabbled for it as blood poured out of the shoulder. Then the Talib gave up and tentatively lifted his hands over his shoulders—
And as he did, Maggs fired a burst and he went down. No prisoners. Not here, not now.
THE NISSAN ROLLED UP and the four Deltas jumped out. Armstrong handed the laptop to Task, the driver, and waved him back into the car. “Task, get around the pickup. If something goes wrong here, you take this and go.” He turned to the other Deltas. “Snyder’s stuck. Leg’s broken. Got to get him out.”
The smoke was thicker now, but Armstrong crawled back into the van as the three Deltas tried to pry open the door. Before they could open it, Snyder screamed, a lungful of obscenities that echoed over the valley. Armstrong had him by the shoulders and was tugging him toward the back of the van. Maggs ran to the back of the van, and together he and Armstrong pulled Snyder out as flames rose from the front of the Mitsubishi. Armstrong and Snyder were coughing, and soot covered Snyder’s face.
“We got you,” Armstrong said.
Armstrong and Maggs and the Deltas carried Snyder to the Nissan, fifty feet past the pickup. Behind them, the van’s gas tank exploded. The van jumped six inches. When it landed, its windows were gone and yellow-orange flames rose from its body.
Armstrong nodded at the burning remains of the van. “We won’t be taking that home.”
“The pickup.”
“Let’s leave it in the road. Buy us some time. We’ll all ride with Task.”
“Gonna be as crowded as that bus.” Maggs looked at the valley below. Ten miles away, at the edge of Mingora, a convoy of cars streamed toward them in the dark. “I’m gonna fix that roadblock.”
As Armstrong and the other Deltas arranged Snyder in the Nissan, Maggs grabbed a grenade and ran for the pickup. The keys were still in the ignition. He turned on the engine and backed up. Metal ground on metal as the pickup pulled away from the van, forming a metal L, that blocked the road completely.
Maggs stepped ten feet away and tossed a grenade inside the pickup and dove for the side of the road. He covered his hands from the twin explosions that followed as first the grenade and then the Toyota’s gas tank blew and the night turned white.
Thunder broke overhead, as if the skies were applauding. Maggs ran for the Nissan, a hundred feet ahead. When he got there, the trunk was open, holes shot through for air.
“Me or you,” Armstrong said, looking down at the trunk.
“Long as it’s not both of us. You’re taller. Stay in the car.” Maggs climbed in and settled himself, shoving aside an AK that was poking into his back. Armstrong slammed down the lid.
THE NEXT THREE HOURS were among the most unpleasant of Maggs’s life. The road twisted like a badly designed amusement park ride: Check out the new Nausea-Coaster. Rain poured into the trunk through the air holes, soaking him to the skin. And he had no way of knowing if the Talibs were closing. Though maybe not knowing was for the best. He’d find out when the shooting started.
But it never did. And finally, the car stopped and the lid popped open. He stretched his cramped legs but didn’t try to move. He shivered wildly. He hadn’t realized just how cold he was. In the distance he heard traffic, trucks passing.
“Enjoying yourself?” Armstrong said.
“Putting the black man in the trunk. Racism, pure and simple.”
“Believe me, it was no fun up front.”
“Where are we?”
“Five minutes from the Islamabad-Peshawar highway, my friend. We made it. Never even saw them. Roadblock worked. Nice job.” Armstrong reached a hand down. Maggs waved it off.
“I’m comfy. Wake me back at the embassy.”
“Come on, you gotta be freezing.”
“Let’s just get it done.” Maggs wasn’t sure why he was protesting. He only knew they’d have to drag him out of the trunk now.
THEY WERE BACK at the embassy before sunrise. Maggs knew he ought to sleep, but he was too jacked. They all were. Even Snyder, with his broken leg. And not just because of the insanity of what they’d just pulled off.
No, they all had the same question.
“What do you think?” Armstrong said, as he unwrapped the plastic that encased the laptop. It was an IBM ThinkPad, an X60. Maggs was no tech, but it looked undamaged to him. It even had its charger taped to the bottom.
“Really hot Paki porn,” Task said.
“They have hot porn?”
“No. That’s why it’s so special.”
“Horse porn.”
“Horse-dog porn.”
“A horse doing a dog? That’s just sick. Where do you get that, Task?”
Maggs plugged in the charger, reached for the on button, then stopped.
“What if there’s a virus on it, erases the hard drive as soon as we touch it?”
“If something goes wrong, we’ll turn it off, unplug it,” Armstrong said. “It can’t delete itself that fast.”
“You sure.”
“I’m sure.”
They should wait, Maggs thought. But they’d nearly died tonight for this lump of plastic. They’d earned the right to its secrets. He reached for the power button and they watched as the machine sprung to life.
24
Brant Murphy,” Shafer said. “Brant F. Murphy. Know what the F stands for?”
“I can guess.”
“This guy’s like a bad dream. Everywhere we turn.”
“Ellis. You said you don’t believe in big conspiracies.”
“I’m starting to.”
“Me, too.”
“Even when Duto put me under house arrest, back in the day, I understood. Didn’t like it, but I understood. He had his reasons. But this feels different. Not like some bureaucratic snafu. Tell me I’m wrong.”
And yet Wells felt a tingle of what could only be called excitement, the thrill of operating without a net, without the agency behind him. He remembered the months after he had first come back to the United States from Pakistan, when he’d broken out of CIA custody and gone to ground in Atlanta. He’d lived lonely and pure.