The branches of a St. John’s Bread tree stretched over the vehicle, and he seemed to stare at its dangling seedpods as if they presented some kind of threat. If anyone in the village was home, they stayed indoors. All the houses remained closed up tight, even that of Durrani’s wife.
Gold moved the ignition switch from ENG STOP to START. The turbodiesel fired up instantly, and she released the switch to RUN. The military vehicle did not require a key, and Gold realized she was lucky no one had stolen it, even absent the threat of kidnapping.
Down the hill, the Mi-17 waited with rotors turning. When Gold put the vehicle in reverse and backed away from the tree, the helicopter lifted into the air. She lost sight of the helo when it pounded low overhead, but she felt its pulsing right through the steering wheel and into her hands.
The chopper reappeared in front of the Humvee as Gold pulled out into the road. Her tires wallowed through a gully and regained their footing on firmer soil in the path. Finally, Parson spoke.
“I’m sending you home,” he said.
That didn’t surprise her. He probably meant it, too. She’d never known him to say anything just for effect. Gold waited before responding, to give him a chance to get out whatever else he had to say.
“I can’t have you making up your own missions,” he said. “Especially suicide missions.” Parson glanced at her, then craned forward to look up at the helicopter. He unzipped a pocket on his survival vest and withdrew his radio. Extended the antenna and rolled the thumb switch. The radio began to hiss.
Gold paused for a moment. Then she said, “I didn’t get myself killed.”
“Not for lack of trying.”
Several minutes passed in silence. Gold drove as fast as the rutted road would allow, which was only about forty. The Mi-17 crossed overhead once, twice. Rashid called on the radio.
“I see nothing on road,” he said.
“Copy that,” Parson said. “Keep me advised.” He released the transmit switch, turned toward Gold, and said, “At least Rashid follows orders.”
Gold nodded, conceded his point. Waited.
“All right,” he said. “What did you find out?”
“Where the Black Crescent leader might be hiding.”
Parson let his right hand, holding the radio, drop to his lap. He gaped at her wordlessly. His reaction relieved Gold a bit. At least he seemed to believe her. She knew she’d probably damaged her credibility with him by going on this mission at all. With no recording, no documents, not even handwritten notes, Gold had only her reputation to back up the intel she’d gathered.
“Uh, where?” Parson asked. Blank look on his face, like he was still processing what she’d said.
“In the Kuh-e Qara Batur, where Aamir wanted to take you. Durrani says there’s an old muj base at the southeast end. The ruins of a fort obscure a cave entrance, and insurgents use the place as a bunker. If you didn’t know where to look, you’d never find it from the air.”
Parson spread his arms, still apparently dumbstruck. The motion caused the equipment in his survival vest to jangle.
“How on this fucked-up earth did you get him to tell you that?” he asked.
Gold told him everything Durrani had said, how he felt Black Crescent worked against everyone’s plans, even his own. Counter-counterinsurgency.
“So he expects us to take out Black Crescent for him?”
“Yes.”
“And we probably will,” Parson said. “Hell yeah, we will.”
Parson looked through his window, out over the hills. Tightened his lips together like he was already planning. Above, the Mi-17 crossed over the road, banked, flew over the Humvee, and went out of view again. The helicopter trailed a smoky line of exhaust.
“But Durrani wasn’t a hundred percent sure?” he asked.
“No. He just thinks that’s a likely spot.”
“Hmm,” Parson said. “We’ll have to request some Predator orbits or some other kind of eye in the sky. Watch the place for a while.”
“That’s what I was thinking,” Gold said. She wondered if she’d be stateside by the time the surveillance began.
“I’ll have to see what Task Force will approve. We’ll tell ’em we got some good human intelligence. We just won’t go into a lot of detail about how we got it.”
Now Parson appeared more interested than angry. Probably the best thing Gold could have hoped. She could see his wheels already turning, perhaps imagining a reconnaissance flight. She just wished he’d let her see this thing through to the end.
Since she’d managed not to get abducted, an early retirement was probably the worst she could expect. The military did not like to slam recipients of the Silver Star. Gold had set her sights on an academic life after the Army, anyway. But she wanted to finish what she’d started. And Parson still needed her; otherwise, he wouldn’t have sent for her in the first place.
“Michael,” she said, “I don’t know if this intelligence will bring what we want. But I hope I get the chance to help you try.”
Parson rode in silence for a minute. Scanned the roadside and looked up at Rashid’s helicopter.
“It might not be up to me,” he said.
No surprise there. Undoubtedly he’d reported her missing that morning. A lot of people would know about it by now.
“So what do you want me to do?” she asked.
“Just press on like normal. If anybody asks, tell them you were gathering intel from a source. That much is true. Let me deal with the rest.”
No surprise there, either. His loyalty again. Sounded like he planned to take some heat for her.
“So you’ll try to keep me assigned to you?”
Parson slid back his seat, put his boot up on the dash. “You got fired,” he said. “But then I rehired you. Just don’t forget you got fired.”
He didn’t smile when he said that. Gold imagined he was more angry than he let on. She appreciated the respect that implied, and she felt sorry she had tested that respect so sorely. But she’d done what she had to do. Her obligations to the Afghan people ran deeper than military orders.
A miscommunication.
That’s how Parson managed to spin it. Gold had been following up on a tip she first got when Black Crescent hit the refugee camp in Samangan. Not absent from her duty post. Not disobeying an order. Chasing down a lead just like she was supposed to do. Parson did not realize she had an off-base meeting that day, and he hit the panic button prematurely.
It made him look like an idiot. What kind of senior officer couldn’t keep track of his primary aide? The Joint Relief Task Force commander even made him apologize to the security forces captain he’d yelled at over the phone.
So Parson wasn’t in the strongest position when he requested Predator coverage over Kuh-e Qara Batur. Three days passed before he received an answer, but on the strength of Gold’s specific information, the request got approved. He watched the first video feed from the unmanned drone on a screen in the Air Operations Center.
Gold and an intelligence officer sat with him as the images beamed down. Crosshairs floated over the mountains, with technical data from the aircraft superimposed along the sides of the screen. Parson recognized some of the information: airspeed, altitude, engine manifold pressure. The rest of the data was unfamiliar, but it looked like bearing and range to whatever was under the crosshairs. He’d spent his career in manned aircraft, and though he understood the importance of these remotely piloted drones, he’d never had much experience with them.