I may come out of this fine after all.
CHAPTER 63
“Do you want your Hoo-Ah bar?” Fury whispered to Moncrief.
Moncrief smiled at the dig.
“You know its proper name.”
The two were wedged in between a pair of boulders that formed a small shelter at the top of the ridgeline. Villegas was farther to the south, protecting their flank. The energy bar came with the first-strike ration. The portable meal carried several thousand calories under the rubric of one of a wildly mixed menu item, from pound cakes and barbecue pocket sandwiches to cheese tortillas. The FSRs were meant to fix a problem. The old combat meals were heavier. And when packing over a hundred pounds of water and ammunition, the Ranger would toss out that which he didn’t like and didn’t want to carry over a mountain range. Often he only kept what he wanted to eat and often what he kept didn’t have many calories. So the FSR lightened the load and did its best to taste good.
The altitude carried a chill. They were well above any tree line, and the calories helped generate some warmth.
Each meal pack contained a nutrition bar. The bar was dual-labeled with the Marine yell of Ooh-Rah and the Army yell of Hoo-Ah.
“How about your Zapplesauce? Come on, Gunny, you don’t need the calories!” Fury pointed to Moncrief’s waist. Moncrief wasn’t any heavier than Fury, but it didn’t stop the harassment.
“Hell, this Zapplesauce?”
Moncrief opened the pouch without any intent of sharing it.
“I could hear you guys in Texas.” Villegas pulled in behind the rock. He leaned his Heckler & Koch 416 rifle up against the rock. The German manufacturer had especially made the black-steel weapon for Delta Force. This one had a can on the end to silence the SOST round, a special bullet that could rip through a car door like a laser beam. The 416 with the SOST round could punch through a window or a door or a mud wall and still pack the power to rip through a man’s chest.
“Here.” The go pills had cut his appetite anyway. Moncrief handed Villegas the energy-boosted applesauce.
“Damn, Gunny, you are the man.” Villegas started sucking the plastic bag. “I worked my way over to the cliff just above their cave. It’s about a mile away.”
“The captain’s gonna cut your freakin’ ding off,” said Fury. “He told you to stay put.”
“What did you see?” Moncrief asked.
“They have about fifteen in the cave. We could dust them, easy.”
“Yeah, you do realize just how fuckin’ far away you are from anyone who would even look your way when they are cutting your throat?” Fury’s anger was becoming more visible. He was right, however, as the closest friendly troop was on the other side of the mountain range. It would take most of an hour for a Blackhawk with reinforcements to cross over the Hindu Kush.
“I got something in my eye with all of this crap.” Villegas’s right eye was tearing up and swollen.
“How are you going to shoot the Windrunner with only one headlight?” Fury kept pushing his partner. “Did you bring the olive oil?”
“What?” Moncrief hadn’t heard of this one.
“Yeah. Hold on a second.” Fury starting searching through the small pack he had the night-vision optics in. “Here it is.”
He pulled out a small, clear plastic dropper with a green liquid inside.
“It’s great for sewage work. If you have to wade through a slime pond, you put drops in your eyes and ears and it keeps the crap out.”
“Thanks, man.” Villegas put some drops in his eye.
Moncrief looked at the two Rangers huddled up below the rocks. They now had gone for most of twenty-four hours without sleep, but the two didn’t seem fazed. Rather, they seemed in the game, focused, intent. Kevin Moncrief felt a familiar sense of being, of belonging. They had accepted him.
“It’ll be dark soon.” Moncrief slowly lifted himself off the ground and peered over the rock. They were several hundred feet above the valley floor and had a view for several miles down both valleys. He scanned the skyline for several miles.
“Well, I think it’s time to get to work.”
On the skyline several miles away, a dust cloud hovered over the desert road.
William Parker woke up from his drug-induced sleep in the backseat of the Toyota and stared out the SUV’s window off to the mountain range in the distance. It was hot and the truck smelled. The cloth seats were torn, with the yellow foam bulging out. His sense of smell seemed to have changed. It was different. The truck had a sharp, sickening smell, like someone had become ill. More important, he realized that he was feeling the beginnings of a fever.
I feel like shit.
The checkered black-and-white shawl that the editor at Al-Quds had given him was damp with sweat. It wasn’t the full illness. His throat tasted like sand. The chill of a low-grade fever made him shiver in the warm morning sun, but the worst had yet to come. When the disease started to cross over the blood barrier, then the headaches would come, the photophobia, and the rash. He was nearing the window when he would be contagious.
Fuck! Not too soon, not too late.
Initially, he would not be contagious.
He said when the headaches come.
When the pounding came he would be a danger to touch. And then the full-blown disease. Thereafter, without the specific antibiotic, there would be the brain swelling that would lead to a coma and, after the coma, a slow, horrific, painful death. In twenty-four hours it wouldn’t matter what they gave him.
“Our passenger is awake.”
Liaquat Anis leaned back over the front passenger seat.
“I am sorry about the drug.” Liaquat, the physician, was speaking. “You can imagine that we must make sure, for your own safety, that you don’t know where we are.”
“I understand. It makes sense.” Silently, Parker thanked the doctor for the drugging. It would help account — in their minds — for his pale skin and cold, clammy appearance.
“You don’t look good, my friend.”
“I said I understand. I’ll be fine.” Parker continued staring out the window. Between Umarov, who was driving, and Parker sat Liaquat. In the back cargo space, two mujahideens were crammed with their AK-47s. One slept in a contorted ball with the rifle between his legs.
The Toyota passed a sign, rusted and hanging on a tilt, near several mud huts. The Arabic writing said DURBA KHEL. Shortly after passing it, the Toyota turned west, heading for the mountains.
Remarkable.
The peaks were dressed in a white coat, but the valley looked starkly different, a moonscape painted in khaki browns and rust and dotted with rocks everywhere. The land seemed a place that no one could live in nor should want to. The road led west toward the left side of a massive finger of rock.
This is it.
Parker remembered the glimpse of the satellite picture.
Moncrief is on top of that ridge. The highest point. If he’s doing his job, he’s looking at me right now.
“You didn’t tell me,” Umarov growled at Liaquat while he drove.
“What?”
“You were supposed to meet up with my brother in London.”
“He didn’t show up. I tried the hotel in the East End where you told me to go. They said he was still checked in. But he never came to our meeting place.”
Parker listened quietly, thirsting for a drink, any drink.
“That’s not at all like Knez.”
Liaquat nodded, his remorse evident. For his part, Parker tried to appear impassive, disinterested. Fortunately, Umarov said nothing more, staring ahead while he drove, never realizing that the man who’d cut his brother’s throat sat inches away.