“Because I was a goat herder,” Forogh said. “These men are not goat herders… at least not all of them.”
“Then why all the fucking goats?”
“Wait here.” Forogh began to creep forward.
Crosswhite knew Forogh from around the base, but he had never worked with him in the field. “Does that haji know what the fuck he’s doing?” he asked Alpha.
“If he says something’s wrong,” Alpha replied, “I believe him — we should let him do his thing.”
Crosswhite crawled forward on his belly to stretch out with his M4 covering the man sleeping near the AK-47. Innocent goat herders or not, if one of them came awake and grabbed for that weapon, he’d have to go.
Forogh slipped up to a goat and crouched beside it, stroking its neck for more than a minute before finally coaxing it to its feet, holding it by the horn and guiding it along through the crowd. Using the goat as an escort, he was able to pass through the herd without spooking the rest of the animals. He crept to within ten feet of the tree where the herders slept and crouched behind a rock, letting the goat go and cradling his M4.
A moment later, Crosswhite heard him speaking softly over the radio net. “We can take these men. They’re heroin smugglers — using the herd for cover. There will be more of them up the trail guarding their cargo. They’re probably headed for Waigal the same as us.”
“How do you know that?” Crosswhite said.
“I can’t explain right now. You’ll have to trust me.”
Crosswhite slid back into cover to confer with Alpha. “What the fuck do you make of that?”
“If he says they’re smugglers, I believe him.”
“Well, that alone doesn’t give us the right to kill them,” Crosswhite said.
“You’re in command,” Alpha replied with a shrug.
By now, the rest of the team had closed ranks, and the column was stretched over no more than fifty feet. All of them keeping watch in every direction.
Crosswhite got back on the net. “Forogh, I have to know why you think they’re smugglers before I can authorize taking them out.”
After a slight pause, Forogh replied, “They look like smugglers.”
Crosswhite looked at Alpha, feeling the devil beginning to bite at his ass. “What the fuck am I supposed to do with that?”
Alpha didn’t need to think it over. “I trust him, Captain.”
“You willing to risk prison on his advice?”
“I’ve risked my life on his advice more than once, and I’m still alive.”
Crosswhite drew a breath and made his decision. “Forogh, how do you suggest we deal with these fucking goats?”
“Can you make your way over here the same as I did?” Forogh asked.
“Christ if I know. Stand by.” He looked at Alpha. “Here goes nothing. Watch those hajis on the tree line.”
Crosswhite crept out to a goat and crouched beside it the same as Forogh had done and began stroking its muzzle, making his way down the animal’s neck. When he seemed to have the goat’s confidence, he coaxed it to its feet and tried taking it by the horn. The animal immediately jerked its head away and butted him in the leg, its horn thudding against the suppressed HK Mark 23 pistol strapped to his thigh. He grabbed the horn again, this time much more firmly, and stood still, waiting to see what the animal would do. It bleated in protest, but this did not seem to rile the others nearby, so he set out along the same path as Forogh, leading the reluctant goat. They had another brief wrestling match along the way, but Crosswhite covered the distance to the rock and let the animal go, crouching beside Forogh.
“You did that very well,” Forogh said.
“I felt like a fucking idiot,” Crosswhite muttered. “So what’s next? We can’t bring the rest of the team through like that.”
“Kill those two men,” Forogh said, pointing around the rock.
Crosswhite looked at him. “How do you know they’re not goat herders?”
“Kill them, and I will show you.”
Crosswhite stared at him for a long moment, then scanned the high ridges along both sides of the canyon. Going around the herd to make their way back down into the trees would take a lot of time, and there was no guarantee they wouldn’t spook the herd. Moreover, if Forogh was right about there being a band of smugglers farther up the trail, they could very easily end up in a damn firefight. Had this been a sanctioned mission with UAV overwatch, there would have been no problem. Infrared would tell them in two seconds whether or not the enemy was waiting up the trail. As it was, however, they were operating the old-fashioned way — on wit and instinct alone.
“Give me your piece,” he said.
Forogh took the MK 23 pistol from his own holster and handed it over.
After informing the rest of the team as to his intentions, Crosswhite leaned his M4 against the rock and rose up. He drew his own pistol and checked briefly on the other two men still sleeping forty yards away at the edge of the tree line. He stepped carefully around the rock and crept toward the tree, gripping a pistol in each hand. Each MK 23 was chambered with a .45 caliber and fixed with a high-efficiency marine suppressor. Unlike the carbine’s supersonic .223 caliber ammunition, the pistol ammo was subsonic, so there would be no sound at all when he fired, other than the cycling action of the pistols themselves. As an ambidextrous shooter, Crosswhite would — in effect — be able to kill both men with a single shot, thus further limiting the risk of alerting the other men or spooking the goats.
He crept to within four feet of the sleeping men, sighted on both their faces, and squeezed the triggers. Their heads exploded open like a pair of busted cantaloupes, and he dropped into a crouch, whipping around to cover the other two men. No one and nothing stirred. It was like nothing had happened.
Forogh was beside him with his M4 a few moments later, and they traded weapons again.
“Now show me how you know they’re smugglers.”
Forogh crouched beside the closest corpse and jerked open the dead man’s robe to reveal the garb of an Afghan mountain warrior, complete with grenades and a bandolier of AK-47 magazines. “Do you see? They are using the herd as cover. I have seen this before.”
Crosswhite breathed a sigh relief and turned to measure the distance between the other two men. “What about them?”
“We should take them alive,” Forogh suggested. “They are the real herders. They will be happy to tell us how many men are waiting up the trail.”
They reached the sleeping men a short time later to see that one of them was rather old, the other in his late twenties maybe. Crosswhite stepped hard on the younger man’s throat and pressed the suppressor into his eye socket. Forogh clamped a hand over the old man’s mouth, and put the pistol against his head, speaking harshly to both of them in hushed Pashto.
Both herders nodded their heads in fervent understanding, clearly petrified. They were rolled onto their bellies, and their hands were secured behind their backs with nylon zip ties.
Needing no prompting from Crosswhite, Forogh began to question the old man at once. “We can call the team forward,” he said at length. “There are eleven smugglers with five burros bedded down fifty meters up the trail. The old man says probably no one is standing guard, but he doesn’t know for sure. In the morning, they will continue up the trail to Waigal Village. Apparently, the village is expecting them sometime tomorrow.”
Crosswhite was crouched across from Forogh, watching around warily. “Ask him where the fuck they came from. Why isn’t there any goat shit back the way we came?”
Again, Forogh questioned the old man at length. “He says they travel an old goat trail down the eastern rim up that way.” He thumbed north over his shoulder. “He says his people use… have used this clearing to rest and water their herds for centuries. He says the Taliban began to move opium through this area about six months ago, for a new market in Tajikistan. I believe he is telling the truth.”