Sandra was feeling dizzy, her vision blurring. “You’re crazy for coming here. Your wife is going to…” She started to cry again, shaking her head. “You shouldn’t have taken such a risk for a… for a fucking adulteress.”
He was worried about her, able to see that she was in terrible shape, probably dying of pneumonia. No way could she walk even with her wounded leg numbed. He was only barely masking his own pain, keeping shock at bay through sheer force of will alone.
“I’ll tell you a secret,” he said to her.
She stared at him as Badira helped her put her arms into the cloak, her eyes glassing over. “What?”
“He didn’t say so, but I’m pretty sure John had a girlfriend in Manila… if that makes you feel any better.”
“If that makes me feel any better?” she said, suddenly lucid. “I can’t believe you’d tell me that in my condition!” She jammed her arms into the sleeves and almost fell over on the bed for lack of strength and balance. “You wait till I see that son of a bitch!”
Gil was glad to see his statement had the desired effect. “If all goes according to plan, you’ll be seeing him a hell of a lot sooner than you think.”
Khan took a firm grip on the handle of the knife and spoke to Badira, telling the American through her to breathe deep and hold it.
Gil did as he was told, and Khan slowly pulled out the knife, immediately covering the wound with the palm of his hand to prevent any air from sucking back into the chest.
Khan spoke again to Badira.
“He says you’re lucky. He doesn’t think any air got into the cavity.”
“Good,” Gil said. “Now slap a patch on that fucker and let’s get this show on the road.”
Suddenly there was a great deal of shouting from outside across the intersection toward the Kohistani house.
Badira and Khan looked at each other, their eyes wide with fear.
“What the fuck’s goin’ on out there?” Gil said, unable to get up from the chair because the palm of Khan’s hand was the only thing keeping his chest cavity from sucking air when he breathed. If too much air got into the pleural cavity, the lung would collapse and twist the trachea, creating a tension pneumothorax and suffocating him.
Badira’s eyes were still full of fright. “Did you… did you kill Kohistani?”
“Shit, they found him already?”
Sandra sat up on the bed, her eyes dancing. “You killed the fucking bastard?”
“Why did you do that?” Badira demanded. “He’s like a god to these fanatics!”
Gil looked at her and shrugged. “He needed killin’… and it seemed like a good idea at the time.”
CHAPTER 53
As far as General Couture was concerned, the moment that Sandra Brux’s Mayday call went out over the emergency band, the entire game changed. He didn’t require the president’s permission to commence rescue operations for a downed pilot of either sex.
“Chief Shannon’s one clever son of a bitch, Captain. He’s left us no choice but to help him.” He turned his back to the screen. “Okay, listen up! I want two alert F-16s scrambled out of Bagram, right now — with whatever they’re carrying — and find out exactly where our airborne B-52s are. I want to keep those bastards in the mountains at bay until we can get a napalm strike in there! Get those Air Force helos inbound for the extraction, and tell them they’re flying into a hot LZ. Also, I want SOAR prepped and standing by to back them up in case this goes to shit. Lastly, somebody find out who the hell Big Ten is and what the hell kind of support he’s providing.”
“Sir, I’ve already got Big Ten here on the flight roster!”
“Feed me, Sergeant.”
The sergeant poked his head out from behind his computer screen. “It looks like he might be a CIA Spectre gunship, sir, but it’s… well, it’s confusing. I’ve cross-referenced the tail number, and this aircraft was supposed to have been taken out service back in ’98. Which doesn’t make any sense because on the next page it says it’s presently based out of Diego Garcia. So I don’t know what the hell to make of it, sir. I think we’re safe to assume that it landed in Jalalabad early yesterday for unspecified electrical repairs… but I can’t guarantee it, sir.”
“Where’s it supposed to be now, Sergeant?”
“Says here, sir, that it departed Jalalabad forty-five minutes ago, bound for Kabul.”
Couture turned toward Metcalf, hands on his hips. “For unspecified electrical repairs,” he echoed. “And since nobody in Jalalabad would ever dream of poking around in CIA business…”
Metcalf lifted his eyebrows and looked toward the console. “Sergeant, what’s the airplane’s configuration? Are we talking about a run-of-the-mill Spectre?”
The sergeant ran his hands over the keyboard. “It doesn’t look like it, Captain. This aircraft keeps changing its designation. It’s been listed as damn near everything at one point… a Combat Talon I, Combat Talon II, Dragon Spear, Spectre… a Combat Shadow, a Commando II — the list goes on, sir. I have no idea how it’s configured now. I’m sorry, but it could be damn near anything.”
Metcalf caught and held the general’s gaze, asking over his shoulder: “Was it ever STAR-equipped, Sergeant?”
The sergeant paged down. “Yes, sir. It’s been STAR-equipped twice — according to what it says here — but it’s not now.”
Metcalf grinned at General Couture. “Are you taking bets tonight, General?”
Couture shook his head. “I suddenly smell Bob Pope back in Langley… and I’d never take a bet where that cagey son of a bitch was involved.”
“I’d say that’s probably smart money, sir.”
The general shook one of the filterless cigarettes from the pack of Pall Malls, offering it to Metcalf, who shook his head. He pulled the smoke from the pack with his teeth and struck a match. “The funny thing,” he said, shaking out the match and tossing it onto the table. “The president himself ordered Steelyard and Crosswhite into that crazy bastard’s custody. Word around the Hill is that he’s got files on everybody… or at least everybody seems to be afraid he does.”
Metcalf watched the screen, wondering what the hell was taking Gil so long to get Sandra out of the building. “This is taking longer than it should, General. I think something’s wrong this time.”
They stared at the screen as a man entered Kohistani’s house. A few seconds later, he came running back out and up the lane. A few seconds after that, men with guns starting pouring out of the command post and heading down the lane toward Sandra’s quarters.
Couture drew pensively from the cigarette, his eyes fixed on the screen. “Looks to me like the proverbial shit just hit the fucking fan.” He looked to the back of the room. “How much longer on those F-16s?”
“Taxiing for takeoff now, General. ETA ten minutes.”
“Where are my B-52s?”
“Twenty minutes south, sir. They’re going to have to refuel before they can make the strike.”
Couture spit a fleck of tobacco from his lower lip. “Might as well be twenty days.”
CHAPTER 54
Khan slathered an overly generous amount of petroleum jelly over the compress Gil took from his harness and used that to seal the knife wound to his back. There would be no time for sutures.
Gil jumped up and grabbed his M4. “Sandra, call down a one-oh-five strike.” He went to the door and checked up the street to see a mob of men running down the lane toward the house, closing fast at fifty yards. “Make it danger close!”