Rashid held his pistol and kept looking down at the village. Gold thought that was a good thing. She knew he was upset about his crewmates, but at least he seemed to have his mind on what was happening now.
“This is probably far enough,” Parson said eventually. The carcass of the Mi-17 was at least a half mile away, silhouetted by the rising terrain behind it. He stopped, turned to look at the stricken helicopter.
Gold supposed Parson wanted to see the fireworks; she felt too heartsick to care. The run of events, the big picture, haunted her now. Things would get worse before they got worse.
A spray of sparrows settled into a birch by a low stone wall at the edge of town. One of the Cobras orbited overhead while the other rolled onto its firing run. It descended at a steep angle, then lined up on its target. Everything about the gunship—its hard edges, stingerlike shape, smudged trail of exhaust—seemed to threaten. Gold thought that even someone from centuries past could look on that thing and know it was a weapon.
Smoke boiled from underneath the Cobra. A dot of light—Gold could make out no more than that—shot from within the smoke. It corkscrewed for an instant and then straightened itself on a direct path to the Mi-17.
When the projectile struck, the helicopter swelled with fire. The entire mass lifted off the ground. Then, in apparent slow motion, its components disassociated from one another. The main rotor spun free like a flaming pinwheel. The tail boom danced end over end through flickering billows. Sparks arced away like embers kicked from a banked campfire, bounced as they fell back to the ground. A half beat later came the noise. Not a blast, more like a hard crump from the very inside of Gold’s head. The sparrows exploded from the birch.
“What in God’s name?” Rashid asked in English.
“A TOW missile,” Parson said.
Not in God’s name, Gold thought. All these things around us man has brought on himself, claims for God notwithstanding.
The helicopter and the grass around it burned. The flames and towering smoke made Gold think of old-time New England farmers firing their fields. But the smell wasn’t the same. Too much odor of oil, fuel, and high explosives.
What kind of stance to take going into the village—that was Parson’s next decision. Ground tactics weren’t his field, but he was the highest-ranking officer present. And this wasn’t the first time circumstances had forced him to take command without the preparation he’d have liked.
He could go in soft: Knock on doors and let Gold make introductions. Or go in hard: Let the Marines kick down doors and, if they found nothing threatening, let Gold smooth it over.
Parson chose the latter. They’d taken fire. If some bad guys remained behind to set a trap, no sense making it easy for them to spring it. Later, somebody might say he should have been nicer. But Parson knew an old joke about that kind of thing: How many stateside second-guessers in air-conditioned offices does it take to screw in a lightbulb? Two: One to screw in the bulb and one to kiss my ass.
He explained his plan to his de facto team. “I don’t know what we’re going to find,” he said. “I’ve seen those sons of bitches massacre a whole village. But I don’t think I heard enough shooting for that to have happened here.”
“We got it, sir,” Blount said.
A smoke haze from the burning Mi-17 hung over the settlement. Tires had cut deep ruts in the muck of its one dirt street, but Parson saw no vehicles. Just a pair of chickens pecking at grains of spilled rice and a goat near enough to starving that its ribs protruded.
Wails and cries emanated from some of the houses. Blount chose the nearest one, pointed to the door, whispered to his men, gestured with his hand. One Marine moved toward the back of the mud-brick hut. He kneeled and held his weapon ready. The other four, led by Blount, stacked themselves by the front door.
Parson sent Reyes and Rashid to the right side of the structure. He crouched with Gold in what little cover they could take by a courtyard’s rock fence on the left. Nobody could slip out of the house unseen.
Blount did not use a ram or any other tool to breach the door. He just slammed his boot against the rough planking. It splintered and slapped open.
A woman screamed. Then she began what sounded like a singsong lament in Pashto. No one fired. Parson heard boot steps thudding through the hovel.
“Clear,” Blount shouted.
Parson and Gold rose from the fence and ran inside. Gold began speaking to the woman. Parson didn’t really know any of the language, but he’d heard Gold utter those syllables before: We will not harm you. The woman wore a drab brown dress and a purple hijab. Apparently she saw no reason to hide her face, and she seemed past caring, anyway.
“What’s she saying?” Parson asked.
“There is nothing more you can take from me,” Gold translated. “Kill me, burn my house. Nothing is left.”
“What does she—”
Gold held up her hand to silence Parson so she could listen. Right now, her expertise trumped his rank, and he knew it.
“They took her boy,” Gold said.
“Who did?” Parson asked.
“The Talibs.”
Parson was puzzled for a moment. Afghanistan had an awful problem with pederasty. In a society where unmarried men and women could not be seen together, far worse things happened than boys and girls stealing kisses. But the Taliban, for all their crimes against humanity, generally did not tolerate child molestation.
Gold spoke to the woman again. The mother answered back in short sentences, a calmer voice. She seemed at least to understand that the strangers who now invaded her home posed no further danger.
“Her son was—is—ten,” Gold said.
“Why did they take him?” Parson asked.
“She doesn’t know.”
Rashid watched the woman, his brow furrowed. He looked at the scene around him as if trying to make sense of it.
“What do you think, Rashid?” Parson asked.
“I hope not what I think.”
Whatever was happening, it did not accord with what Parson knew of the Taliban. When they hit a village they didn’t like, they usually left behind nothing but bones and ashes. Killing civilians was one of the few things at which they excelled. It certainly figured that in a time of natural disaster, they’d find a way to add to the misery. But whatever they’d done here had more method than madness.
“Did she recognize any of the bad guys?” Parson asked.
“No,” Gold said. “But she probably wouldn’t tell if she did.”
True enough, Parson thought. It’s hard to convince people you’ll protect them if they don’t know how long you’ll stay.
“Let’s see what else we find,” Parson said.
In the next house, they found nothing. Half the walls had collapsed in the quake or one of the aftershocks. The dirt-floor dwelling smelled of mold and stale bread, along with the cold soot of a burned-out cooking fire.
At the house after that, Parson walked through the door and stopped short. The sight before him ripped through all the barbed-wire fences he had strung around his emotions.
The little girl who’d been following Gold around lay clinging to the body of her mother. The child cried silently, could not form words or even sounds.