“Negative, Golay.”
“Okay, come right about ten degrees. I’ll pop another one.”
He carried bigger flares in his survival vest, but he preferred not to use them in this wind. They’d spew sparks that could fly anywhere and start a fire. Parson cursed under his breath and loaded another round.
With the launcher held above his head, he thumbed the trigger and let it snap forward. The flare rocketed straight up, but again its velocity gave in to the wind. The dot of light sailed down the mountainside toward the valley floor. Parson made another radio call.
“Lightning, Golay One-Eight,” he said. “You pick up that one?”
“Negative, Golay.”
Parson tossed the launcher onto the ground beside his helmet bag, pressed his talk button again: “All right, Lightning,” he said, “I’ll try a signal mirror.”
He held the mirror between his thumb and middle finger. The glass was about the size of a playing card, only thicker. Parson aimed through the sighting port in the middle, angled the mirror until he centered the sun’s fireball on the first helicopter.
“I visual you,” the lead pilot called.
Sometimes low-tech’s the way to go, Parson thought. He put down the mirror and keyed his radio again. “Copy that, Lightning,” he said. “We’re on the south end of a ledge. There’s room for one of you to land just north of our aircraft.”
“Understood.”
“The surface winds are real squirrelly,” Parson added. “Be careful.”
Long pause. Then the Mi-35 pilot said, “We careful.”
Gotta remember to avoid American slang when Gold’s not around, Parson noted. That poor guy just took part of his mind away from flying to wonder what squirrels had to do with wind.
Parson stuffed the pen-gun launcher back into his survival vest. He pulled himself inside the Mi-17 and helped Reyes put Sharif on the Skedco litter. Bloody bandages swathed the engineer’s leg. Sharif propped himself up on his elbows, but kept his eyes closed.
When Parson stepped back outside, the Hinds were close, setting up their approach so near that he could feel the pounding in his ribs, see the pilots’ helmets through the canopies.
One chopper began descending. The other stayed high for overwatch. Maybe this will actually work, Parson thought.
Now the lower aircraft descended so close that Parson could read its tail number, see the Afghan roundel. Its exhaust shimmered and blurred the terrain behind it. Then the chopper entered the mountain wave wind effect as if it had flown into an unseen waterfall.
The Mi-35 dropped so quickly, Parson thought for a moment both engines had failed. But they hadn’t quit; they screamed at full power. The aircraft rolled hard to the left. Parson felt in his chest a twist of horror. He expected the helo to hit the rocks and explode, but the pilot pulled up just above the ground. The chopper rattled away across the valley floor, then climbed. The twist behind Parson’s breastbone released. He took in a deep breath.
“We try again,” the pilot called over the radio.
Parson keyed his radio once more, thinking to tell the helicopter pilots to approach from a different angle. But he took his thumb off the switch. These guys knew what they were doing; he’d just let them do it. They couldn’t express themselves well in English, but that didn’t mean they were stupid. The helo circled, descended, approached again, this time parallel to the ridge.
That turned out even worse. The helicopter entered the mountain wave and rolled almost ninety degrees.
In that attitude the helo had the aerodynamics of a rock. The Mi-35 plunged toward the mountainside. The aircraft swept over Parson’s head so near, he felt the heat. Its tail rotor clipped a sapling just yards below the downed Mi-17. Then the winds released the chopper, and the pilot recovered so low that the rotors left a plume of dust.
“Lightning,” Parson called, “pull off.” Then he added every phrase he could think of, official or not, to make himself understood: “Abort, Lightning. Retrograde. Return to base. Get the hell out of here.”
The Mi-35 climbed. Parson expected to see it grow smaller, but it turned and headed back again. Beside Parson at the rock wall, Conway said, “That dude has more balls than sense.”
“Yeah, he does,” Parson said. He jogged over to Rashid, handed him the radio, and said, “Tell him to stop being a hero before he kills himself.”
Rashid spoke into the radio. A long answer in Pashto. Rashid spoke again, looked at Parson.
“Tell him it’s a damned direct order,” Parson said.
Rashid made another transmission. Finally the Mi-35s climbed together, joined up in formation and turned on a heading toward Mazar. Another crackle of words on the radio. Rashid smiled.
“What did he say?” Parson asked.
“He say protection of Allah upon us until helicopters come back and land.”
The beat of rotors grew fainter until only the sound of wind remained, rushing over peaks, eddying around passes, resonating in long, low notes of an ancient mountain anthem.
13
As Gold and the Marines pulled away from the village compound, she watched through the Cougar’s side window. No one appeared in front of the homes. But from the back, a kite lifted into the air. The diamond-shaped kite consisted of two crossed sticks and rough brown paper, with a knotted rag for a tail. Clouds raced above it, and the wind swept it ever higher.
“Sergeant Blount,” Gold said, “I think you should see this.”
Blount stared back at the village. “All right, people,” he shouted, “look alive. Gunner, keep your head on a swivel.”
“I thought the Taliban frowned on kite-flying,” Lyndsey said.
“They do,” Gold said, “except when they use it as a signal.”
“Oh, hell,” Ann said.
The kite soared so high, Gold lost sight of it. She supposed a strong gust had snapped its string. The women at the village had obviously sent a message, but what? Gold kept the tip of her thumb on the fire mode selector of her rifle, but she hoped she wouldn’t need the weapon. The Cougars were taking a different route on their return to Mazar, so insurgents would find it hard to set up an ambush even if they knew when the team left the village. Best case, the kite signaled that the woman needed to talk to her husband.
Whatever the message, Gold knew the Taliban never had a problem communicating. They used computers, phones, and Icom radios when they had them. But they could also send signals perfectly well by flying kites or releasing pigeons.
The road—another rutted, rock-infested dirt path—led through a gorge so deep, it blocked the wind. Near the bottom of the gorge, with the Cougar headed downhill on a quiet idle, Gold heard a different kind of signaclass="underline" distant, evenly spaced rifle fire in a kind of iambic pentameter. Five shots and their echoes.
“What the fuck is that?” the gunner asked.
“A message,” Gold said. Probably some kind of answer.
“This is really giving me the creeps,” Ann said.
Gold didn’t like it, either. What had she gotten herself—and these Marines—into? The very air around her felt strange, as if it were made of some element not on the periodic table. The war had taken weird twists and turns for her, but this was uncharted territory: a parley with the wife of an enemy leader, or at least a former enemy leader. Perhaps a shura with Durrani himself. Or maybe an ambush around the next bend.
But you didn’t make peace by talking only with your friends, Gold reminded herself. And you didn’t win a war by never taking chances.
No ambush took place. The two Cougar MRAPs traveled winding paths where they met no other traffic, and they made it back to Mazar safely. At command post, Gold and Blount briefed an Air Force intel officer on what they’d seen and done. The officer made a phone call, and the Marines launched a Cobra to destroy the crippled MRAP left by the roadside on the journey to the village.