Blood had flowed along the edge of an overturned table and pooled in a corner of the room. Blood had spattered a shelf of crockery, apparently ejected from an exit wound. Tracks of blood wound through the hut: large boots, small shoes.
Gold kneeled by the girl. She put her hand on the child’s back. The girl spasmed as if in a seizure but made no other response.
When Gold spoke, the child turned, buried her face in Gold’s lap. Scarlet smears covered her hands and arms.
“Let me check her out,” Reyes said.
“Her name is Fatima,” Gold said.
Gold whispered in Pashto, stroked Fatima’s back. The child shook her head. Parson could imagine the conversation: -Let the strange men examine you. -No, strange men have done enough today.
Finally, after much talk, Fatima stood and let Reyes look at her. The PJ opened his medical ruck, checked her for wounds, took her pulse.
“She’s not hurt,” Reyes said. “Physically, I mean. That must be her mother’s blood all over her.”
“She says they came and took her brother,” Gold said. “Their mother tried to stop them.”
Reyes unsnapped the tube to his CamelBak and offered it to Fatima. “Tell her to drink from this,” he said. “She’s dehydrated.”
Gold spoke. Fatima took the tube in her hand, which looked to Parson like the fist of a doll. She paused before placing her mouth on the tube, sipped once and then stopped. Too distraught to want water or food, Parson supposed. She was only doing as she was told because she felt some small connection to Gold, and because she simply didn’t know what else to do.
“This is so fucked up,” Blount said.
“You got that right, Gunny,” Reyes said.
“My daddy used to slap me and my mama around,” Blount said. “Ain’t nothing lower than hurting a little one.”
“I bet he didn’t slap you around for long.”
“I fixed it so he didn’t do that no more.”
For just an instant, Parson thought he saw a thousand-yard stare in Blount’s eyes. But then the big man focused again, watched for threats, monitored his men.
“Ask her if she knows why they wanted her brother,” Parson said to Gold.
Gold cut her eyes at him without turning her head. Parson knew that look: You’re pushing it, sir. She never hesitated to tell him when she thought something was a bad idea, and for that he was grateful. But this time she allowed one more question. Gold spoke again in Pashto.
“She says the men told him he’d become a soldier of God,” Gold said. “They shot the mother and took him away.”
So they were kidnapping boys for child soldiers? Using the chaos of the earthquake, perhaps, to pull off something they might not get away with otherwise.
Turning disaster to their advantage certainly sounded like the Taliban. Even when they’d ruled, they’d taken no responsibility for their people’s welfare. No real department of social services. No functioning ministry of agriculture. A government uninterested in governance. Only their militias and religious police took their duties seriously. Beyond that, Allah would provide.
By the time Parson’s team finished searching the rest of the settlement, night had fallen. A broken cloud layer scudded away to reveal a full moon bright enough to throw shadows. The search found two other murdered parents, as well as the existence of one other missing boy.
Parson couldn’t quite get his mind around what he was seeing. Disaster relief was hard enough without these assholes coming up with something like this. What God could they imagine they were serving? The problems he faced had changed now. Not just earthquake recovery anymore. He and Gold had a dragon to kill.
His head still ached from the RPG blast that began the attack on the helicopter. In much of his experience with RPGs, they’d appeared as harmless green pinpoints on night vision, ineffectual arcs in the blackness, fired upward at his aircraft and not even reaching his altitude. But this one had caged his gyros.
At least the weather was cooperating. Parson knew the Osprey crew would fly back on night vision goggles, but with the clear sky and lunar illumination, they’d hardly need them.
He worried whether darkness would bring back the bad guys, and he ordered everyone to stay alert. But all seemed quiet. Apparently, the insurgents already had what they wanted.
4
In the quiet of night, Gold watched and listened for signs of life. At first she heard only the distant tapping of automatic rifle fire, the music of destruction in sixteenth notes. Some skirmish in the next valley. Closer, she made out the yowl of a cat.
Parson had sent the rest of the team to bring back the bodies of the imam and the two other villagers killed in the attack on the helicopter. Now he walked ahead of her, safety off on his Beretta. With one hand, Gold took Fatima’s hand; with the other, she held her M4.
They stopped at a hut where lamplight shone through an oil-paper window. Parson knocked at the door. Gold let go of Fatima and gripped her rifle with both hands.
“We come as friends,” Gold said in Pashto. “We are Americans. We will not hurt you.”
From within the home came the sounds of wooden clatter, metallic clinks. Perhaps a grab for a weapon. Gold snapped her fire mode selector to the AUTO position.
“Leave us,” a voice called from inside.
“We have with us a little girl of your town,” Gold said. “Her name is Fatima. Her mother is dead. We want only to leave her in someone’s care.”
“I know no one by that name.”
“Sir, can you take in this child?”
“Leave us!”
Gold moved away from the door, put her rifle back on SAFE.
“My cousin lives here,” Fatima whispered.
That did not surprise Gold. Cousin or no, Fatima would be another mouth to feed, and a worthless girl at that. A goat probably carried more value here. She explained the situation to Parson, and he summed it up in his own way: “Bullshit.”
It seemed not a shred of mercy remained for anyone in Afghanistan, but especially not for females. During previous deployments, Gold had heard of parents selling girls to buy food. Even in antiquity, Afghanistan had been a bad place for women. Gold thought of a nearby historic site, the Tomb of Rabia Balkhi. Rabia Balkhi was a medieval poetess who’d died in an honor killing. Her brother had killed her for having sex with a slave lover, and she’d written her final poem in her own blood.
Parson and Gold knocked at two other homes. At one, they got no answer, though a cooking fire burned inside. At the other, the answer came: “I will not open my door to infidels.”
“We’ll just have to take her back with us,” Parson said.
“Don’t we need to get clearance from Task Force first?” Gold asked.
“We’ll just ask forgiveness instead of permission.”
That worked for Gold. She worried about how Fatima might react to an aircraft ride and getting dropped off with strangers at the MASF, but it seemed better than leaving her to fend for herself.
Gold kneeled to speak with the girl at eye level. “Fatima,” she said, “you will have to come with us. We’ll take you for an airplane ride and get you some food and a place to sleep.”
“I want to go home.”
Gold fought tears. “I know you do, my dear,” she said. “But your mother is gone. I know this is hard, and I am so sorry. But there is no one to take care of you here.”
Fatima began to cry. “My brother might come back,” she said. “I have to be at home if he comes back.”
Now Gold’s eyes watered too quickly to control. She blinked, felt the tears escape. Droplets fell onto her arm, her rifle barrel. She let the M4 lean into the crook of her elbow, and she embraced Fatima. Against her arms she felt the softness of the little Afghan girl and the hard angles of the weapon.