They stared at each other for longer than she would have predicted, but he eventually let out an exasperated breath and whipped back the sheet. The chest cavity of the headless body had been opened up and Randi crinkled her nose as the smell intensified.
“I can’t believe you flew me out here for this, Randi. Did they tell you we took fire on the way?”
The story she’d gotten from the pilot was that they’d seen a rocket contrail a good thirty miles away, but she still managed to conjure an expression dripping with empathy.
“I could have been killed,” he mumbled to himself as he scanned a pad full of his own illegible handwriting. “Saw my life pass right before my eyes…”
“The body, Pete?” she prompted.
“Well, if you look very closely you’ll see that his head is missing and there’s a bullet in his chest.”
“Everyone’s a comedian. Which killed him?”
“The bullet. He was dead when he was decapitated.”
“Toxicology?”
“Spotless. Not so much as an aspirin.”
“You’re sure,” she said, still bothered by the strange behavior she’d reconstructed from the battlefield. Killing field, really.
“I wouldn’t have said it if I wasn’t sure. And why are you so interested in this guy, anyway? It’s not like the Afghans have never decapitated anyone before.”
“Sure, they’ll occasionally hack off a head or three. But this was different. It was every man in the village. And it looks like they didn’t try to defend themselves. Not at all.”
His irritated expression faded a bit as he pondered that scenario. “How many?”
“Seventy give or take.”
“Did you bring me one?”
“A head? No. It looks like they carted them away.”
“So this wasn’t some kind of ceremonial mass execution. They actually wanted the heads.”
“Seems like it, but I don’t know why. Maybe they’re working on a jihadist promotional video. But something about this feels wrong to me.”
“Well, it was obviously incredibly important to them.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because they planned ahead. The spine was sawed through first before they finished the job with a serrated knife. And heads aren’t light. Seventy of them would be upward of six hundred pounds.”
“How long to saw off a head? Hanging around after doing something like this would be risky.”
“Hard to say exactly.”
“Is there a body around here that no one’s using? And a saw?”
“No, Randi. Besides, we’re not talking very long. This wasn’t a handsaw. The chipping suggests a powered circular saw.”
Randi looked down at the mutilated body and tried to work through what she was being told. “Look, I’m pretty sure I know who’s responsible for this — there’s a neighboring Taliban village that the people of Sarabat have been going at it with probably since before Jesus. But it’s hard to imagine them stopping by the local Sears and buying a battery-powered saw. Last I heard, they didn’t even have the electricity to charge it.”
“Who knows why people do the things they do,” Mailen said with a shrug. “It’s a crazy world.”
“That’s not helpful. Why this? And why now? After a couple thousand years of back-and-forth, the Taliban just roll in with no special weapons and kill everyone without taking a single casualty?”
“Who cares? Pretty soon Afghanistan’s just going to be a bad memory and a few yellowing pages in a history book.”
“I need to know, Pete.”
“That’s easy to say. But how exactly are you going to find out?”
“I figure I’ll go ask them.”
“Them? You mean the Taliban? I’m not sure they’ll be all that happy to see you.”
“Maybe not. But this is the kind of thing that keeps me up at night.”
Mailen threw the sheet back over the body and began pulling off his apron. “As your doctor, I’d advise you to buy one of those Dresner units instead. I hear they make you sleep like a baby.”
8
Lieutenant Colonel Jon Smith pressed the accelerator to the floor, but didn’t get much of a reaction from his ’68 Triumph. He’d given a lot of time and love to its restoration, but his mechanical skills had never quite lived up to his enthusiasm. The passenger door still had an annoying tendency to fly open when he turned left and the hesitation in the motor seemed to be getting worse now that fall temperatures were descending on the area. Time to swallow a little pride, step away from the tools, and take it to a shop.
He eased back on the gas and slowed to fifty, catching an occasional glimpse of the mist-covered Anacostia River through the trees. To anyone else, that image, the empty road, and the cool air flowing through the window would have been calming. For him, though, it was a drive that usually led to getting shot, stabbed, or thrown off something disconcertingly tall.
He flipped on the radio and used a worn knob to move through the stations. The news was typically depressing and he scanned past it, settling on a morning DJ until the show devolved into something about a juggling stripper. A few more turns took him to NPR and he was surprised to hear a familiar voice emanating from the static-ridden speakers.
“I’m telling you that it’s going to be completely transformational. Normally I don’t like to make predictions but there you go.”
It was his new friend from Vegas. Janine Redford.
“So when you say transformational,” the interviewer said, not bothering to hide his skepticism. “Are we talking automobile transformational or just iPod transformational.”
“We’re talking about fire and agriculture transformational.”
The interviewer let out a more energetic laugh than was normal for public radio. “When you decide to predict, you really go all-in, don’t you, Janine? The Merge just came out. How much time could you possibly have on it?”
In fact, it had been available for just over twenty-six hours. Stores had popped into existence in the world’s major cities the week after Dresner’s presentation — assembled virtually overnight in spaces rented months before under oppressive secrecy. Smith had driven by the glass-and-neon Merge shop in DC the day before with the idea of stopping in, but the plan had turned out to be a bit naive. The line of potential customers was already wrapped around the block when he got there.
“I got it at a tech industry preview yesterday and have been using it pretty much constantly since then. In fact, I’m using it now.”
“You’re using it right now?” There was a moment of dead air. “For all of you listening, let me just say that Janine is not wearing a headset.”
Smith grinned and turned onto an inconspicuous road that wound down toward the river. It seemed that it hadn’t taken Janine long to overcome her youthful cynicism.
“I have to admit that I was resistant at first and I’d be lying if I said there wasn’t a little peer pressure involved, but I’m an early adopter at heart.”
“And I have to admit that they’re totally invisible. I can’t see them at all.”
“The studs? Honestly, the whole thing is kind of a non-event. They clamp your head into this machine, put some headphones on you so you can’t hear the drill, and then it’s over.”
“No anesthesia?”
“It probably wouldn’t be a bad idea to have a couple of cocktails first, but you don’t need anything more than that. The whole thing’s over in less than three seconds — too fast for you to feel it when it’s actually happening. A few hours later it starts to ache a bit but the thing’s so amazing, I keep forgetting to take my ibuprofen.”
“Did you try the headset before you did it? Are the studs worth it?”