“You want me to let go now?” Gold asked.
“Hold the pressure point, but let go of the wound itself.”
Gold took her hand away from the pad, and the pararescueman wrapped fresh dressings over it. “Okay,” he said. “I got it now.” Gold released the woman’s upper arm and stood back to let the PJ do his job.
She took a handkerchief from her pocket and wiped her fingers. The effort left bright red blotches on the white cloth. She shuddered, then folded the handkerchief into a neat square and put it away.
“Was that you with the line-over?” she asked.
“Yeah, that was a little more excitement than I wanted.”
“Good save.”
“Thanks,” the PJ said. He inserted an IV needle into the woman’s good arm, then glanced up at the badges on Gold’s ACUs. “I bet you’ve had one or two malfunctions yourself.”
“One or two.” Gold switched languages and said to the woman, “I will leave you with this medical man. He thinks you will not lose your arm.”
“Peace be upon both of you,” the woman said.
With the injured now in the hands of four pararescuemen, Gold decided to see what she could learn. She wanted to talk to more of the people in the camp, but first she needed to get an idea of the damage. In front of a row of tents, she found the man the refugees had spoken of—the one gutted for wearing a watch.
The witnesses had not exaggerated. The man’s blue entrails coiled about his waist and legs, covered with flies. He lay on his back, staring with dead eyes into the sky. To Gold, his expression seemed to ask whether any ultimate authority had seen what had happened to him. His blood dampened the ground around him as if someone had poured oil to settle the dust, and the blood turned the soil the color of copper. His left hand had been hacked off at the wrist. The hand rested in the dirt beside him, palm up, callused by whatever had been his work.
She turned away, tasted bile at the back of her throat. A deep breath helped fight her retching reflex. She took hold of a tent rope with both hands and tried to steady herself.
What manner of human being could do this to another? Gold was starting to believe a certain amount of evil always existed in the world. Like matter, it could not be destroyed. Only moved around and changed in form.
And those young boys, Fatima’s brother, were in the hands of the men who did this. What would those kids turn into?
Gold kneeled and closed her eyes. Asked a higher command for strength and composure. Skill and judgment. If there’s a right thing to do here, please help me find it.
For a moment, she concentrated on sounds. That infernal buzzing of flies. In the distance, the chirps of a starling. The crunch of footsteps.
She felt a hand on her shoulder. Before she opened her eyes, she knew it was Parson.
“These sights don’t get any easier, do they?” he asked.
“No, they don’t. Will you please help me up?”
Her joints still felt stiff from sitting in an awkward position while holding on to that wounded woman’s artery. Parson took her hand and pulled her to her feet. Through his flight glove, she felt the grip of his fingers and remembered that frostbite had shortened some of them. He had a way of showing up at her lowest moments, like during her capture in that winter storm. Parson had called on all his survival training and outdoor experience to keep the two of them from freezing to death. Now it wasn’t the elements she faced, but the cold, thin edge of despair.
“Intel will need all we can find out,” Parson said.
“I know,” Gold said. “We have work to do.” She took her writing pad and one of the pens from her MOLLE gear, clicked the ballpoint pen.
“I guess we better find the people who ran this place,” Parson said.
“The refugees say they’re all dead.”
And they were. Gold and Parson found three American men and two women lying in a row, shot execution-style, close range. Each had taken a bullet to the head. On the ground just a few feet away, five cartridge casings gleamed in the dust.
The victims still wore their ID cards on lanyards around their necks. Gold flipped up one man’s card so she could read it. He’d been a USAID employee, part of a Disaster Assistance Response Team.
All of them looked to be in their late twenties. Gold thought she knew the type. During a six-month TDY tour at the Pentagon, she’d seen them every day on the Metro. Fresh out of Ivy League graduate schools, idealistic enough to choose government over Wall Street, hoping to change the world. Not a bad sort by any means, just naive. Riding to work carrying leather briefcases and bottles of spring water, texting with iPhones, talking on Bluetooth. Looking at her uniform with the proper dose of respect, but way too much pity. And never expecting to meet an end like this.
Parson had never seen Gold in such an intense conversation. She spoke to a group of women gathered around her, taking notes, gesturing with her pen.
Though Parson did not know Pashto, he usually had some idea of what Gold said just from the context and the expressions. Not this time. When she wasn’t making eye contact with the women, she seemed to gaze into distant hills, looking at something not visible to him. At every pause, he wanted to jump in and ask her what was happening. But he told himself that would be stupid; just let her do her job. Moments like this were why the Army had spent so much to teach her what she knew.
Rashid came over, and even he kept a polite distance from the discussion. If there was something those women had a hard time discussing with Gold, Parson figured, they sure as hell wouldn’t tell a man. Maybe they recounted sexual assaults, and Gold was trying to get the women to report it. Rashid reached into a leg pocket of his flight suit and took out a nearly empty pack of unfiltered Camels. The cellophane crinkled as he fished out a cigarette.
“Can you hear what they’re talking about?” Parson asked.
“Not all of people live…” Rashid struggled for the word. “Near,” he said. “Not all live near. Some flown in from other damage place. Some from Taliban village.”
“So?”
“Some women say other women know something. Know where bad men hide.”
Go on, girl, Parson thought. If she could find that out, it would be the best intel victory since the Navy SEALs dropped in on Osama bin Laden.
“Is she getting anywhere?”
“I cannot hear. She say, ‘Do you not want more for childs than to die?’” Rashid placed the Camel between his front teeth. In the breeze, he had to flick his lighter three times to get the cigarette burning.
“Sounds like a good approach to me.”
“Those women very afraid,” Rashid said. He exhaled blue smoke and removed a fleck of tobacco from his tongue. “They have need to be afraid.” He swept his arm across the camp, across the dead and wounded.
Rashid had a point. No wonder Gold needed to make such a hard sell. Parson decided to change the subject. “I think once the PJs get the worst patients ready to go, they’ll call some HH-60s in here for medevac,” he said.
“There are more than we carry on Mi-17,” Rashid agreed.
“How do you like those two new crew members?”
“Sergeant Sharif very good,” Rashid said. “Lieutenant Aamir not talk much.”
“How’s his flying?”
“I do not know yet. I fly all way here. I let him fly back to Mazar.”
Good idea, Parson thought. You couldn’t make a new guy a good copilot if the aircraft commander was a stick hog.
Parson monitored not just the individual talents of these Afghan fliers, but how they worked together. They came from different regions and tribes, which could be a big issue. To apply for enlistment, they needed two letters from village elders affirming their identity and their fitness for service. That certification meant Afghan crew members carried the honor of their families with them on every flight. They faced all the challenges of any student trying to earn wings—and they did it in a combat zone under constant terrorist threat. Parson wished he could buy every one of them a round of beers every day, but that high compliment shared among American aviators wasn’t the thing to do here. Culture and faith banned alcohol for Afghans, and General Order Number One forbade it for Americans.