Hila reached a door at the end, pushed through it, and ran inside.
I called after her, reached the doorway, turned into the room, and found her at the far end, running toward a window, a real window, which was rare to find.
We were in a massive bedroom with a four-poster bed, heavy furniture, and yet another flat-screen TV. It was like a room in a five-star hotel that had been built in a neighborhood of utter squalor. Very surreal. I’m sure parts of the village didn’t have electricity, but Zahed sure did; either that or he ran his TV off a generator.
I rushed to the window to find Hila pointing. “There!” she cried. “There!”
Across a long, tree-lined courtyard, past fig trees and a wall covered in rose bushes, were the silhouettes of three men standing near a wrought-iron gate.
One of them had to be the fat man. He was tall, six feet five at least, and huge, more than four hundred pounds, I guessed.
Stacks of luggage were lined on the walkway beside them. They were waiting to be picked up.
Damn it. I tried the window. Locked. I couldn’t find a way to open it! I turned back—
And when I did, a man was standing in the door with his AK pointed at us. “What’re you doing?” he asked in Pashto.
I shifted in front of Hila but didn’t raise my rifle. “The infidels come from the basement,” I tried to say.
The man took a step forward and frowned. Aw, no. I must’ve made a mistake. Maybe I’d told him his mother was a whore, I wasn’t sure.
Before I could react, another man jogged up beside the first and began screaming and tugging at his buddy.
I stole a look out the window.
A car had rolled up outside.
The first guy shouted at me again. I threw myself to one side, raised my rifle, and fired a salvo into him and his buddy, no silencer, just me and the AK dishing out lead loud and clear. Both went down, but the first guy had started firing—
And Hila let out a scream.
As both men fell, I clambered up, shouldered my rifle, and rushed to Hila, who’d fallen onto her back and was clutching her side. I immediately pulled away her shirt and saw that a round had pierced the right side of her abdomen, no exit wound.
I chanced another look out the window. The wrought-iron gate was open. The three men were fighting over something, their voices raised as they rushed to get in the car while two others hurried to load the luggage.
“This hurts,” said Hila. “Please. Can you help?”
“It’s not that bad. You’ll be okay.”
She clutched my hand. “Please. I need help.”
“But I need to go,” I told her. “He’s outside. He’s going to get away…”
She grabbed my hand even tighter as tears welled in her eyes.
TWENTY-NINE
I’d thought Hila would beg me to stay with her, but she narrowed her gaze and said, “Okay. Get him. Then come back to help me.”
“I will.”
“Okay.”
I understood now. She had wanted to die, but ironically the gunshot now gave her the will to live. I dragged her behind the bed, out of view from the doorway, and then I grabbed the pistol I’d given her, tucked it into my waistband, and bolted to my feet. I seized a pillow from the four-poster bed, then braced the pillow in front of my face. With a running start, I launched into the air and let out a string of curses as I crashed through the window and landed in a shower of glass on the dirt below.
The three figures ran toward the car now, a black Mercedes, probably fitted with bulletproof glass. I came rolling up with the pistol in my hand and shot the two guys loading luggage.
The driver opened his door and raised a pistol. I shot him, and then, as I sprinted toward the gate, I got my first clear look at the men:
Bronco.
His Asian buddy “Mike.”
And the fat man himself, decked out in silk robes and clean turban and with a beard that splayed across his chest. He wore big gold and diamond rings, and when he faced me, he frowned for a second as both Bronco and Mike reached down to draw weapons.
“Unh-uh,” I said, tugging down my shemagh.
“Aw, Joe, I can’t believe you’re this stupid,” said Bronco, slowly raising his palms now. “Didn’t you get your new OPORDER? We got you pulled off this job. Finally…”
“You’re bluffing. I got nothing.”
Zahed eyes narrowed in fury, and he turned to Bronco and began screaming. I didn’t catch very much, but he’d said something about Bronco being the fool.
All three of them backed toward the car.
“Don’t move,” I warned them.
“We have to leave,” said Mike. “You have no idea how important this is or the extent of this operation.”
I craned my head at the sound of multiple helicopter engines echoing off the mountains. We couldn’t see them yet, but they were coming… and more gunfire echoed from the hills. Harruck had committed some forces all right, and I wondered if the Predator controller had finally been granted permission to unleash his bombs.
“Tell Zahed I’m taking him into custody,” I told Bronco.
The old spook shook his head. “Joe, you’re wasting your time. If you take him in, I’ll get him released — all because your people haven’t even contacted you yet. What a joke.”
I raised my pistol even higher and began to lose my breath. Bronco was right. It was all just a game. I could bring in Zahed, and yes, they probably would get him released. Nothing would change.
The satellite phone tucked into my back pocket began to ring.
“So I guess you know the rest,” I tell Blaisdell, as she scrutinizes me with those lawyer eyes flashing above the rim of her glasses.
She glances down at my report. “Yes, it’s all here.” She sighs. “I don’t want you to have any unreasonable hope. You admitted what you did right here. In addition to the obvious charge, they’re going for dereliction of duty… failure to keep yourself fully apprised of a fluid tactical situation… conduct unbecoming an officer.”
“What was I supposed to do? Lie? I’ve done enough of that already. And there were witnesses.”
“Let me ask you. Do you think what you did solved anything?”
I take a deep breath and look away. “I don’t know. I just don’t know.”
“The report tells me what you did. It doesn’t say how you feel about it.”
“How do you think I feel? Ready for a party? Why does that even matter?”
“Because I’m trying to see what kind of an emotional appeal I can make. Unless somebody decides to take a huge risk, to go out on a limb for you, then like I said, I don’t want you to have any unreasonable hope at this point.”
“Unreasonable hope? Jesus Christ, what do you people expect from me?”
“Captain. Calm down. I’m still recording, and I’d like you to go back and finish the story. If there’s anything you might’ve left out of the report, anything else you can remember that you think might help, you have to tell me right now…”
I served with a guy named Foyte, a good captain who wound up getting killed in the Philippines. I was his team sergeant, and he used to give me all kinds of advice about leadership. He was a really smart guy, best-read guy I’d ever met. He could rattle off quotes he’d memorized about war and politics. He always had something good to say. When he talked, we listened. One thing he told me stuck: If you live by your decisions, then you have decided to really live.
So as I stood there, staring into the smug faces of the two Central Intelligence Assholes, and looking at Mullah Mohammed Zahed, a bloated bastard who figured that in a few seconds I’d surrender to the futility of war, I thought of Beasley and Nolan; of my father’s funeral; and of all the little girls we’d just freed in the tunnel. I thought of Hila, lying there, bleeding, waiting for me, the only person she had left in the world. And I imagined all the other people who would be infected by Zahed’s touch, by the poison he would continue to spread throughout the country, even as one of our own agencies supported him because they couldn’t see that the cure was worse than the poison.