Matt and Van Dreeves cleared to the left to ensure there were no openings or doors while Hobart kept his flashlight on the dark opening in front of him. As Matt turned, he heard Hobart say loudly, not really a scream, just an authoritative “Halt!” While it was doubtful that the elderly man in a white bed dress understood the command, he no doubt comprehended the muzzle of the weapon staring him in the face.
Confused, Matt moved quickly to Hobart’s side and said in Pashto, the man’s native tongue, “Do you have a captive here? An American?” The man had a long, graying beard and thin strands of hair on his head. Matt could visualize him in his traditional headdress looking much more authoritative.
Quickly the man nodded, as if to say yes. He then began waving his arms for them to follow. Cautiously the three men trailed behind the man in the white robe and began to gather hope, the worst of all emotions.
Instantly, as they entered the room, Matt knew that something was wrong. He could see the spot where his brother should have been. A mat and blanket were lying on the floor as if they’d been recently used. Two water bottles were tipped over, empty, against the mud wall.
The man was screaming now, “Taliban! Taliban!”
Matt placed his hand on the man’s shoulder, calming him. Again, in his native language, Matt said, “Time?”
The elder muttered something he did not understand, but the body language indicated that he had just seen him only minutes ago. He was pointing at himself and then back at the mat. He walked over and picked up a water bottle and then pointed at himself again, followed by emphatically demonstrating how he had just provided a bottle of water to his guest.
Matt quickly walked through the other rooms until he found himself back with the others. Van Dreeves was standing next to a window about seven feet above the dirt floor.
“Look at this shit,” Van Dreeves said, running his hand along the wall. “He went out here. Climbed out, or someone dragged him out.”
“Damnit!” Matt and the others raced through the front door and around the back toward the fig orchard.
“Footprints, sort of,” Hobart barked, shining his flashlight on the ground. “You can see one leg is dragging a little bit.”
Matt knelt onto the moon dust to examine the tracks identified by Hobart. He ran a gloved hand across the imprint, as if to touch his brother’s soul. He looked over his shoulder at the nervous old man whose home they had just raided in search of Zach.
“Where was he hurt?” Matt asked in Pashto. The man immediately began touching his left leg.
By now Sergeant Eversoll was kneeling next to Matt.
“He can’t be far, sir.”
“Far enough.”
“What don’t you see?” the sergeant asked.
“Other footprints.”
“That’s right. He thought he was escaping. That’s our Code of Conduct. Always try to escape.”
Matt hung his head for just a moment. So close, yet Zach was nowhere to be found. He was like a zephyr.
“The river. He probably moved toward the river knowing it would flow south. Hell, he probably thinks he’s in Pakistan.” Sergeant Eversoll was visualizing what he would have done.
The team covered the ground to the river in short order, each searching in an opposite direction. Matt looked to the south, his eyes searching desperately for his brother.
His gaze was met only by the discomfiting beauty of the mountain range angling sharply into the narrow valley through which the river and its rapids ran. He was reminded for a brief moment of his time with Zach in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. Often, they would raft or canoe along the rocky banks of the South River.
“Call the pilots and have them fly the river from south to north as they come in to get us. He’ll be on the river.”
Matt felt a trickle of confidence fight his despair. They were close and would soon locate Zach.
The first shot struck Sergeant Eversoll in the chest, knocking him backward into the rock jetties that bordered the rushing water.
Suddenly a fusillade of rocket-propelled grenades and Russian-made PKM machine-gun fire enveloped them from the far bank.
Matt dove for cover near Eversoll and returned fire. Van Dreeves opened his first-aid kit and ripped away Eversoll’s body armor and outer tactical gear.
“Hang on, buddy, we’re right on top of you.”
As Matt was returning fire, the thought occurred to him that the closer you approached your goal, the tougher your path generally became. The end of a race, preparation for a final exam, or closing in on the enemy leader all shared the same ingredient. The challenge increased as one neared the objective. He could not remember how many Stratego games, the object of which was to capture your opponent’s flag, he and Zach had played as kids. But he had learned an axiom in life after being defeated by Zach’s bombs and swift game-board tactics: the enemy always gets a vote and usually has a different idea than you.
Eversoll’s breathing labored as Van Dreeves worked feverishly to find the wound. Rampert called on the radio to the helicopters. Matt and Hobart returned fire with well-aimed precision.
Colonel Zach Garrett crawled to the shore, pulling the boat with one hand behind him. He settled onto a sandy outcropping as he noticed a few dim city lights in the distance. Having operated in Afghanistan for several months, he thought he recognized the terrain and was visualizing where he might be located on a map. Generally an optimist, Zach resisted believing what his instincts, even memory, were telling him.
The river broadened and slowed considerably. Bernouli’s equation was at work again, where the same volume of water through a less constrained space had reduced velocity.
As he struggled to secure the craft between two rocks, he noticed the pain in his leg had gone mostly numb. About two miles downstream from where he had put in, machine-gun fire had echoed along the valley floor, tracers poking through his craft, leaving small smoking holes. Only now did he realize that he had been struck at least once. He limped weakly as he attempted to move to cover.
Grabbing some washed-up poplar tree limbs and straw, he shrouded the boat as best he could. He needed time to think before venturing into the city, where assuredly he would be detected. For the most part, if it was Jalalabad, he should be safe, but there was no guarantee. More often than not, it was Al Qaeda and the Taliban who were prowling the streets late at night, intimidating citizens and flaunting the chronic lack of government authority.
Shivering on the bank of the river, he watched an MH-47 cargo helicopter and AH-64 Apache gunship suddenly appear in the mouth of the valley to his south. He tried to stand, leaning against two rocks in the sandy bank. He stared into the black night at the familiar sounds of the welcome aircraft as they raced overhead at what he believed were speeds in excess of one hundred and fifty miles an hour. The helicopters were visible only briefly as they flew low and fast along the river, weaving with each curve of the valley.
Always amazed at the skill with which these pilots flew, he was suddenly mad at himself for pausing in his solitary journey. While the aircraft were most likely responding to a fight somewhere, he believed that if he had been in the middle of the water, they would have at least reported that fact to the headquarters as a matter of routine.
More importantly, the presence of U.S. aircraft flying freely in the area indicated to him that he was in Afghanistan, not Pakistan, and that his instincts were proving correct. He was essentially paralleling the Pakistan border about a mile or two to his east. Zach looked at the snowcapped mountain ridge etching its way along the black night as if to illuminate with a highlighter the Pakistan border.