Chapter 4
September 19, 2001
“Hop in.” Jim popped the trunk as he slid his sedan into park at Kris’s curb. “I can help you with that.” He unbuckled his seat belt and got one foot out of the driver’s door.
“I’m fine.” Kris hefted his ruck. He’d done the best he could getting everything packed. He’d whittled out as much as he could, too. But how did someone pack for a warzone when he had no idea how long he’d be gone? One sweater or two? How cold was Afghanistan cold? Was the jar of peanut butter really necessary? After six weeks of MREs, would he murder someone for a spoonful of Nutella?
He dropped his ruck in the trunk next to Jim’s. His was smaller, leaner. Less full. They both had sleeping bags strapped to the top and thin sleeping mats on the bottom, but Jim had obviously stuffed his pack almost to bursting. Kris wanted to run back up to his apartment and grab everything he’d dumped. Clearly, he hadn’t packed enough. But if he stuffed it fuller, he wouldn’t be able to lift it. And then what would George say?
Kris slammed the trunk and came around to the passenger side. Jim stared. “Ready?”
“Are you?”
Jim handed him a cup of coffee, then held his own out for a toast. “Here’s to the last cup of Starbucks.”
The rest of the drive to Langley was silent. Fog shrouded the city, heavy with dew in the early-morning hours. Jim’s headlights got lost in the gloom. Kris watched the yellow beams fall apart in the gray haze. It looked like smoke, like he was in the center of a firestorm. His heart sped up, beats pounding. He smelled fire, tasted ash. Heard the screams again. Was this what so many people had seen that morning, their last vision of the world? Dust and ash, forever? Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.
He leaned back, resting the side of his head on the window, and counted the minutes until they arrived.
Jim badged into the front gate and drove out to the long-term parking structure. He poured a bottle of fuel stabilizer into his tank. “Hope this car is still here when I get back. God knows how long we’ll be gone.”
They grabbed their rucks, Kris’s shoulders screaming, his back aching. He forced his expression neutral, hiding the pain, the way it felt like his spine was compressing down to a single inch. He didn’t speak as they made their way across three parking lots of people just starting to arrive. The newcomers didn’t seem to care about two men hiking toward headquarters, looking like they were going off to war. Then again, it was the CIA. Weird things happened every day. And everyone knew the CIA was on the move, mobilizing to respond to the attacks.
The rest of the team was waiting with their gear and the crates that had lined the hallways and conference room for days.
In minutes, the truck rumbling across the parking lot would ferry the gear and crates, and the bulk of the team, to Dover Air Force Base, where they’d fly out to Germany that afternoon. Kris and George were taking a later flight from Dulles, rendezvousing with everyone before transferring to Tashkent to meet the Special Forces team.
Reality was starting to set in. The team joked loudly, trying to bleed out the adrenaline, fill up the quiet spaces that hung over their heads.
Maybe they’d never return. Maybe they’d never set foot in Langley again. Kris caught Ryan eyeballing him, his dark eyes watching from beneath the brim of his ball cap.
“Let’s load up!” Ryan slapped the side of the truck when it braked. Hot exhaust fumes poured over the team. They moved fast, hauling the heavy crates into the back. Their gear followed. Kris loaded his ruck, grunting to heft it the final foot. Ryan grabbed it from him with one hand and swung it the rest of the way.
When everything was loaded, Ryan, Phillip, Derek, and Jim hopped aboard.
“We’ll see you in Germany.” George shook Ryan’s hand. “Safe travels.”
The truck rumbled away. Kris tried to swallow.
An hour later, he and George countersigned for a release of $5 million. The money was packaged in twenty-dollar and hundred-dollar bills, all used. There were bundles of $10,000, and bundles of those to make $100,000. Everything was loaded into two black duffels. The CIA accountant glared at them both. “You both will be the signatories for this cash. Keep track of every expenditure. Get receipts.”
Kris snorted. George smiled. He took one of the duffels and gave the second to Kris. They’d never be able to get receipts from the Shura Nazar. The concept didn’t even exist in Afghanistan.
Their last stop before leaving was to see Clint Williams.
Even though Kris was the least experienced, he was indispensable to the mission. His connections with the Shura Nazar, his language abilities, his familiarity with the culture, the way he’d become the Afghanistan expert in the CIA—if there was anyone else, literally anyone else who could go instead of him, Kris knew George would take them instead. But Kris was the man who had what George, and the CIA, needed for this mission. Which, despite Ryan’s Special Forces experience and the team’s experience in the field and in hostile situations, made Kris almost the most valuable man.
He could feel George’s resentment, burning like a heat wave crossing the desert, as they sat in Williams’s office.
“Gentleman,” Williams said. He folded his hands. “The president has asked me to give you your final orders. You already know you are to convince the Shura Nazar to work with the CIA and the United States military and to accept US forces into the Panjshir Valley. We will be utilizing their territory as a base of operations for our war against the Taliban and against Bin Laden. They need to be on our side.”
Kris shifted. George leaned forward, nodding.
Moving high speed into Afghanistan, coming on full throttle with demands to the Shura Nazar would be just about the worst way they could possibly approach building an alliance. In a culture built on reputation, on saving face, the US would be perceived as an invader and an interloper. They had to have a softer touch. They had to become allies. Friends. They couldn’t go off like a misfired firework, or the entire mission would blow up in their faces.
“There’s one more thing you gentlemen need to take care of. The president has ordered your team to do anything and everything you can to find Osama Bin Laden, and his senior leadership, and to kill them.”
Silence. Kris froze. Beside him, he saw George go still, his spine stiffening. Kill orders, in the history of the CIA, were rare. Far rarer than the public believed. Rare enough that Kris knew it was George’s first. His first, too.
“Bin Laden can’t be captured. He can’t be tried here in the US. He sure as hell can’t be tried in some Sharia court in a Muslim country. Any al-Qaeda leader would turn into a symbol, a rallying point for every terrorist who hates America. No, the president wants Bin Laden dead. And I want to ship Bin Laden’s head to the president in a box of dry ice. I told him you could deliver.”
George blinked. Kris’s gaze slid sideways. What now, fearless leader?
“Have I made myself clear?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Excellent.” Williams stood, buttoning his suit jacket. He shook George’s hand, then Kris’s. “You men have your work cut out for you. You’d better get going.”
George and Kris shared a long look as they walked out, hauling duffels filled with $5 million in cash and heading to the farthest spot on the planet.
Tashkent, Uzbekistan
September 21, 2001
Tashkent was every third-world nightmare Kris had ever had, rolled into one depressing, festering city.
Abandoned Soviet factories lingered like scars on the cityscape. Desperately poor Uzbeks huddled on street corners, their faces lined with weariness and the ravages of decade-old Soviet occupation, war, and endless struggle. Heroin traffickers from Afghanistan flooded the streets with the cheapest grade of their drugs, and high Uzbeks lay in a stupor in ditches and on the side of the road. The rest of the heroin was refined and sent on to Russia.
Everyone was armed. Everyone carried Russian-made AK-47s over their shoulder, and RPGs and machine guns rested on the back of nearly every rusted-out pickup. From the airport, Kris, George and the team sped through the capital to the US Embassy in a blacked-out SUV.
The embassy’s political officer met them, ushering them into empty quarters the Marines had vacated for their arrival.
The political officer and ambassador fed them, spreading out American-style burgers and french fries on a long table in the conference room. There, they got their up-to-the-moment briefing.
“We got word that the Shura Nazar officially invited your team into their territory this morning. We received a cable from Dushanbe station. The Shura Nazar diplomat there gave our embassy coordinates for your entry.”
George smiled. “Fantastic.” He turned to Kris and nodded.
Kris tried to smile back, but it was tight, his lips pressed to his teeth, almost painfully so. Guess that was the only recognition he was going to get for making the connections with the Shura Nazar and guiding Dushanbe station through their negotiations with a completely foreign and unknown potential ally.
What else was new?
Iranian forces were already on the ground. Their Ministry of Intelligence had sent operatives and officers into Afghanistan following September 11 and were already embedded with Shura Nazar units in the south and the west. “Iran, and the Shia government there, hate the Taliban. The Taliban murdered eleven Iranian diplomats when they seized the Iranian Embassy.”
George scowled. “We really don’t want anything to do with the Iranians.”
“They’re staying well away from the locations where your team is planning on inserting. But they sent this through the French Embassy this morning.” The political officer spread out an Iranian-made map of Afghanistan with detailed notes of al-Qaeda and Taliban positions labeled throughout the southern region of the country.
“We’ll have to check this out. Get eyes on. We can’t launch without confirmation that these are actual Taliban and al-Qaeda locations.”
“The Iranians told the French to tell us to ‘keep it’. We wanted you to see it first.”
“Forward it to CENTCOM. See if they can get satellite coverage over the targets. Get them on deck for when the bombing starts.”
“The Uzbeks have reported that the Taliban MiG fighters are grounded. You don’t have to worry about air-to-air intercept. Just surface-to-air.”
“MiGs? Who was flying MiGs for the Taliban? They don’t have that military capacity.” Ryan frowned, his brow furrowing hard.
Kris leaned forward. “Russian mercenaries were flying for the Taliban for a hundred thousand dollars a day. The Taliban could buy that with their drug-and-oil money. But Moscow has told all mercenaries to get out, and get out now.”
“Thought Moscow said they couldn’t control their mercenaries? Hasn’t that been their line for years?” The ambassador’s eyes twinkled.
“Moscow says whatever they need to say, whenever they need to say it.”
The ambassador snorted. “And your Special Forces team arrived yesterday. They’re bunking at the airport. With the way the weather changes, they want to be ready to move at a moment’s notice.”
Flying over the Hindu Kush and into Afghanistan was fraught with danger under the best conditions. The mountains pushed most helicopters to their upper limits. The helos shuddered in the thin air, fighting physics and wanting to drop out of the sky. Fog and snow sometimes blinded out the passages, leaving the pilots flying in total whiteout conditions.
“Smart. What’s the weather like?”
“Looks like there’s a break in the cloud cover tomorrow. If all holds, you’ll fly out then.”
The international airport at Tashkent looked like a haphazard series of shipping containers stacked together. Once, it had been painted powder blue, probably by the Soviets, who had a thing for pastels. The flight line was cracked asphalt, weeds filling the divots and cratered holes, never to be repaired. Sinkholes marred the expanse, filled in with cheap tar and sand.
Decrepit MiGs from the days of the Soviet Union languished next to mothballed military helicopters. Nothing had flown in years.
Light spilled from the open doors of a squat hangar, its windows broken, where a team of Special Forces operators sat around a mountain of gear.
The political officer pulled up in front of the hangar. A Special Forces team member stepped forward, a giant of a man with fiery red hair and a thick beard. He waited as they all piled out. Frigid wind whipped through Kris, cutting through his fleece jacket as he stood on the busted tarmac.
“Captain Sean Palmer?” George strode ahead, hand outstretched.
“That’s me, sir. Special Forces ODA 505, at your service.” Palmer and his small operational detachment of six men would be reporting to George, putting themselves, for the duration of the mission, at his and the CIA’s command.
George introduced his team, Captain Palmer shaking hands as they went around the circle. George turned to Kris last. “And, this is Kris Caldera. He’s the agency’s Afghanistan expert, my political affairs officer, and our linguist on the ground.”
Palmer looked him up and down before holding out his hand. Kris was less than half his size. “Sir,” was all Palmer said.
Kris nodded as they shook, gave Palmer a half smirk, and then shoved his hands in the pockets of his jacket. He tucked his face into his scarf.
Palmer brought them into the hangar, to the circle of men they’d be operating with. Some cleaned their rifles and handguns. Others joked around. One was reading.
“Everyone, our CIA people are here.” Palmer introduced them, going from man to man—Jackson, Warrick, Rodriguez, Cobb—before finally coming to the last. “And this is Sergeant David Haddad, team medic.”
Haddad nodded to Kris and held out his hand, stepping forward to meet him halfway. Kris shivered, but Haddad’s hand was warm as they touched. Unlike the others, Haddad didn’t hesitate, or raise his eyebrows, or give him the skeptical once-over. “As-salaam-alaikum.”
“Wa alaikum as-salaam.” Kris tried to smile. His lips were still buried in his scarf.
Palmer spoke, pulling Kris’s attention from Haddad. “Gentleman, I’d like to get on the same page with you ASAP. Do you have time for a briefing?”
George nodded and beckoned Kris and Ryan to join him and Palmer at Palmer’s small command post—a map and a laptop open next to a flashlight—while Jim, Derek, and Phillip stayed with the Special Forces team. Kris looked back once.
Haddad caught his gaze. He smiled, nodding to Kris before turning back to his book.
“Kif h’alek?”
Haddad turned away from his book, looking up at Kris. A ghost of a smile curved one corner of his mouth. “Wa’enta, shen h’alek?”
Kris smiled. “I thought I placed your Arabic accent. Libyan, yes?” He’d said hello to Haddad in the Libyan dialect, with the softer Bedouin phrasing and the Egyptian-Tunisian influences of the Maghrebi dialects.
“I grew up in Libya. My mother is American, though.” His eyes drifted, just over Kris’s shoulders, for a moment. “We moved when I was ten.” He peered at Kris. “You? I can’t place your Arabic.”
“I’m Puerto Rican, actually. Not Middle Eastern.”
“From the island?”
“No, the other Puerto Rico. New York.”
Haddad chuckled. “I didn’t think they spoke Arabic in Puerto Rico.”
As curiosity about his age went, it was one of the nicer, and subtler, questions. At Langley, one of the range officers who’d signed off on Kris’s weapons qualification before the mission had stared at him and outright asked, “Aren’t you a little young for this op?”
“I studied languages in high school and college. I pick them up easily. I was fluent in Arabic in two years, familiar with most of the dialects in three. Farsi a year after that. I taught myself Dari after the agency hired me.”
“You speak Spanish, too?”
“Sí. Y tú?”
Haddad grinned. “I’m just the team medic. It’s a good thing I already knew Arabic. You can’t teach this dog any new tricks.”
Something curled through Kris’s veins, a familiar warmth. “Oh, I’m not sure about that.” He winked, his flirty nature naturally rising—
Mortification drenched him, sliding down his bones and under his skin like hot oil. What was he doing? Flirting? With a soldier, a member of the Special Forces? On a mission? His face burned, and he looked away, squinting at the open doors of the hangar and the flight line. Would the ground open up beneath him, please?
God, had George seen that? After his ridiculous spiel to Kris about keeping himself contained and to not advertise? There he was, flirting with the first hot soldier who gave him the time of day. Proving George’s bullshit. Fuck.
Haddad reached for Kris’s ruck, lying nearby. Their gear had been brought to the airport and dropped off, ready and waiting for the final flight into Afghanistan. Haddad dragged the ruck between them. “I added more gear you’ll need.”
Kris crouched, hiding his groan. Not more shit.
Haddad pulled out each item one by one. “Your headset and radio, extra ammo—” Kris already had his 9mm strapped to his thigh. “—compass, beacon, maps of all our areas of operations marked with escape routes, sleep sack, poncho liner, night scope, day scope, flashlight, backup flashlight, GPS, spare batteries, more spare batteries, and more batteries. And everything else you brought.”
His clothes were squished in the bottom, next to a paperback he’d picked up in Germany and his all-weather CIA laptop. “Will two million in cash fit?” He still had one of the duffels under his control. For the moment, it was at the embassy, locked in the ambassador’s safe.
Haddad stared at him. “We talking in ones or in hundreds?”
“Twenties and hundreds.”
Shrugging, Haddad pointed to the bottom of the ruck. “In between the flashlights, maybe?” He grinned. “We should be able to make it all fit.” He shoved everything back and stuffed the ruck closed. “Here, try it on.”
The pack was definitely heavier than before. A radio antenna stuck out over one of his shoulders now. His sleeping bag pushed his head forward. He stumbled under the weight as he hefted it on his shoulders, but managed to get the pack settled.
It felt like he was carrying an elephant on his back. If he took a step, he’d collapse.
Haddad stared at him. “Good?”
“Yeah.” Kris tried to smile. His eyeballs were going to pop out of his skull if he breathed too deeply.
He probably weighed one-third of what Haddad did. Haddad’s biceps bulged out of his long-sleeved undershirt like he was a professional NFL linebacker. His chest was solid muscle, tapering down to a trim waist. Next to him, Kris wasn’t a twink, he was a twig. He was a matchstick, and the ruck was going to snap him in half.
But Haddad smiled at him again, that small, tight smile.
Kris’s knees weakened, and not from the load.
Shit. He was fucked.
Haddad was gorgeous. He’d recognized that immediately. Someone would have to be blind to not see Haddad’s good looks. Bronze skin, a wide face, sweeping cheekbones, a jawline chiseled from granite. He was impressively built, with sculpted muscles that screamed of hours spent in the gym, training his body to perfection.
But, there was more, too. There was depth in his dark eyes, something that viewed the world unflinchingly. And something deeper. Something that seemed to tug at Kris, a force that made him want to fall into David Haddad. He had a presence, a pull, and it worked on every bone in Kris’s body. Haddad had his own gravity well, and Kris was a shooting star, brushing too close to his orbit.
No, he couldn’t go there.
Part of him felt like he was falling already, flying at the speed of light right at Haddad.
God, he was fucked. So fucked. He was here to fight a war. Avenge the people who had died, whom he’d let die. Try to fix, somehow, everything he’d done wrong, everything he’d let happen. Not crush on a Special Forces soldier. The Army frowned on men like him, anyway. Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell was the rule of law. Anyone in the military who was as gay as he was had to keep their mouth firmly shut.
That wasn’t his style. And it didn’t seem like Haddad’s, either.
“Let’s get this off you.” Haddad helped him slough off the pack, taking the weight easily in one hand. It had to weigh at least seventy pounds. He tried to hide the deep breath he took, the way he rolled his shoulders. They felt like he’d ripped them off and tried to shove them back into their sockets the wrong way.
Pain wasn’t sexy. Struggling wasn’t sexy, either. He had to carry his weight. Not fall behind or slow the team down. He’d sworn he would shove George and Ryan’s skepticism in their faces, rub their snide looks in his success. He’d sworn he would do the right thing, dedicate everything he had to the mission, to revenge.
He wouldn’t have time for crushing on Haddad.
He’d broken out in a light sweat hefting the pack, but now that it was off, the frigid Tashkent wind chilled him to the bone. He shivered, shoving his hands back in his black jacket and tucking his face into his wool scarf.
Haddad pulled out a beanie from his cargo pants. “Here. This will help.”
Kris frowned. His hair was his best feature. He’d actually been able to style it that morning. Maybe the last morning for a long, long time. He wanted to enjoy the feeling.
“Your hair is very stylish.” Haddad winked. “But I promise you. You’re going to want this. It’s only going to get colder.”
Cheeks burning, Kris took the beanie.
Tashkent, Uzbekistan
September 22, 2001
The weather cleared overnight. At daybreak, Kris, George, and the rest of the CIA team left the embassy, heading back to Tashkent airport. Derek, their pilot, had stayed behind, bunking with the Special Forces team.
When they arrived, the team was loading the squat, fat helicopter that would take them over the Hindu Kush and into Afghanistan. The rotors spun as the soldiers stacked the gear waist-high along the center of the cargo area, strapping everything down in a hodgepodge game of Tetris. Mini mountains of equipment and rucks filled the cargo area, almost butting into the fold-down canvas seats along the bulkheads. Kris searched for his, trying to find the smallest rucksack in the pile of gear.
“Caldera.” Haddad’s deep voice called out to him, barely audible over the roar of the rotors. Haddad beckoned him from near the front of the helo. He had Kris’s ruck on the deck, next to his own.
Haddad’s medic pack made Kris’s ruck look miniscule.
Kris picked his way through as Palmer’s men and his CIA coworkers crammed themselves into too-small seats and shoved their legs around the cargo. There was just enough room for the gear and their bodies if they kept their knees up to their chests.
Around him, the helo rumbled, vibrating like it was trying to shake them all out. He imagined every screw turning loose and falling out, the helo coming apart into a billion pieces on the tarmac and leaving them standing in the center of the rubble. The engines roared, the rotors sounding like the uptown express in Manhattan was rumbling over his head, over and over again.
Haddad passed Kris a headset with padded earphones. He slid them on, careful of his spiked hair. The roar faded, the volume on the world turned down. Kris still felt the vibrations in his bones, felt his organs rumble and pulse, but at least he could hear himself think.
Haddad’s smooth voice came through the headset. “You’re going to want to put on that beanie I gave you. The rear ramp and side doors will be kept open so the door gunners can hold position throughout the entire flight. It’s going to be frigid.”
Kris tugged on Haddad’s beanie and zipped up his fleece. He had his thick outer jacket shoved in the top of his ruck, and he crouched down to grab it. As he did, the helo’s engines turned over, spinning up with a wail. He pitched sideways and then forward, the helicopter shuddering and shaking. He reached for what was closest to brace himself. Both his hands wrapped around Haddad’s thighs, his face mashed into Haddad’s hip.
“Sorry! Shit, I’m sorry, I’m sorry…” Kris scrambled back, falling on his ass. He’d inadvertently hit on Haddad yesterday, and now this? He could practically feel George and Ryan’s scorn burning into his back, feel the weight of judgment crashing down on him. This wasn’t the time, or the place. He had assholes to prove wrong.
Gently, Haddad helped him up, holding his elbows until he was steady on his feet. Haddad grabbed the helo’s handholds and pulled Kris’s leather gloves and camo poncho liner, a silken, down-filled blanket that had felt like a slice of heaven when Kris had first handled it, out of his ruck. “Put on the gloves, too. And keep the liner near. You’ll probably want to wrap up in it.”
Kris nodded, looking away. Was bone-melting mortification going to be his default setting now, especially around Haddad? He was off to a great start.
He strapped himself into his seat, waiting stiffly as Haddad buckled in next to him. Haddad’s muscles, wrapped up in his own layers of fleece and heavy jacket, pushed against Kris, their bodies pressing together from shoulders to ankles. He tried to shift away as subtly as he could.
Through the headset, he heard Derek talk through their takeoff, their route through Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, over the mountains and into Afghanistan. Derek spoke to Tashkent tower, CENTCOM, and CIA CTC directly, bouncing signals off satellites to reach three different places on earth simultaneously. The flight crew, bundled up in cold weather gear, took up positions at the massive machine guns mounted at the side doors and rear ramps as the helo lifted off.
Their mission had officially begun. They were on their way to Afghanistan.
They banked hard and turned south east, flying low and fast toward the border. Tashkent disappeared, turning to sprawling farmland worked over by stooped men with wooden hand tools and mules. They were flying through time, it seemed, gazing down at centuries past. Dirt roads cut between the farms, snaking through untouched steppe and rugged wilderness.
Kris pressed against his seat, pushed back by the force of Derek’s acceleration. Rays of bitter sunlight spilled into the cabin, slipping through the freezing air. He squinted, fumbling for his sunglasses. Haddad, of course, already had his on.
Grassland and steppe faded, replaced by dust and scrub highland. Dirt roads vanished, turning to trails, then rutted tracks only camels could traverse. Part of Kris wanted to lean out and take it all in. These were ancient roads, caravan tracks used by Silk Road travelers, and before that, the first humans to cross the Asian continent. He wanted to revel in it, in history and sights no one had been able to see for years.
But he was too damn cold.
Ten minutes into the flight, he was a Popsicle. He shivered, huddling into his jacket as the temperature kept dropping. He burrowed under the poncho liner and tried to pull his beanie down farther. Tried to tuck his face into his scarf, the top of his jacket. The rest of the team was bundled up as well, but they all had at least a hundred pounds on him to begin with. He was the runt.
As if to spite him, Derek pushed the chopper faster, dropping altitude until they were running full speed down the length of a twisting wadi. There was nothing beneath them, no signs of life. The earth looked like the moon, like the oceans had been drained and they were the last humans on the planet at the end of the world. Ahead, the mountains on the border of Afghanistan soared, scraping the sky with peaks of snow and ice.
He left his stomach behind as the helo rose, a dramatic ascent that pitched them nearly vertical. He was strapped in, but still, he flailed. Haddad reached for him, wrapped his poncho liner tighter around him. The mountains seemed to encircle them, getting closer, closer, until Kris was certain they were going to crash. He flinched, screwing his eyes shut.
Haddad’s hand landed on his thigh and squeezed once.
Kris heard Derek calling out altitude readings. He’d never heard Derek’s voice go that high, that strained. Back at Langley, Derek had walked them through the ball-shriveling terror that was flying over the Hindu Kush. Few Soviets had ever done it and lived. No Americans had ever made the flight. The mathematics and physics alone almost suggested it was next to impossible.
Most helo pilots thought they were hot shit if they flew up to ten thousand feet in altitude. The Hindu Kush started at ten thousand feet, and then went straight vertical, as if they held up the sky, poked through the atmosphere and jabbed at the stars.
When he opened his eyes, they had leveled off and were flying between two massive walls of snow-and-ice-coated stone. At fourteen thousand feet, Haddad signaled the team, and everyone reached for the oxygen masks above their heads. Haddad pulled Kris’s down and showed him how to hold it over his face. Cold oxygen flowed, frigid, but welcome. His head, which had started to ache, cleared.
Derek threaded the mountain passes, their rotors buzzing snow flurries off the sides of peaks, close enough that their revolutions whistled against the rock face. He could reach out and brush the mountain, if he wanted, the soaring, jagged peaks of untouched ice. Sunlight pierced the sky, falling through the mountains like samurai swords, like blades from a vengeful god. They and their helo were tiny, insignificant, and as far from humanity, from life as he knew it, as he’d ever been. Were there any humans on the planet more remote than them? If someone had told Kris they were actually on the moon, he would have believed them.
Did time still exist? Kris could hear his own heartbeat, the hiss of the oxygen, and the rumble of the rotors, but other than that, it was like being dropped into someone else’s memory. Each blink lasted a lifetime, the world a smear that passed before his eyes.
Derek continued to call out elevation markers. Sixteen thousand feet. Sixteen-five.
He couldn’t stop shivering. Haddad’s hand on his thigh was the one warm point of contact in his whole body. He wasn’t going to make it to Afghanistan. He was just going to freeze on this flight.
Haddad felt his shivers, he was certain. At 17,200 feet, Haddad pulled out his own poncho liner and a second jacket from his ruck and laid them both on top of Kris. Kris hid his face in his fleece and burrowed into Haddad. Fuck his pride. He needed the warmth.
Haddad wrapped one arm around him and pulled him closer.
The jagged peaks eventually gave way, turning to endless stretches of rumbling brown hills, snow snaking in waves across the higher elevations until that too petered off. Beneath them, as far as the eye could see, was the earth made wild, unimpeded wilderness, void of any human touch. Hills and valley, rugged and brown and filled with dried ravines and scrub brush. No humans. No life at all.
Finally, almost two hours after the flight began, the helo turned southwest and headed into the mouth of the Panjshir Valley.
The Soviets, during their occupation, had called the Panjshir the Valley of Death. They’d lost more soldiers in that valley than anywhere else and had come to a standstill in their occupation that had tried to press deeper into the Afghanistan mountains. They’d failed, and then they’d turned tail and run. The valley had been a graveyard of invaders for centuries, the Soviets only the most recent to meet their end at the hands of the Afghans. Before them, it had been the British. Before the British, Alexander the Great had been stopped on the land roaring beneath them.
Would America be the next great empire to find its end in Afghanistan? Would they themselves meet their ends in this Valley of Death?
From the sky, Kris spotted the remains of the Soviet occupation and endless civil war everywhere: rusted-out tanks and troop transports, bomb craters that had obliterated the roads, tattered remnants of minefield warning signs. Square-shaped mud houses riddled with bullet holes huddled together around the winding banks of the Panjshir River, its waters a deep, unfiltered sapphire. Green grass murmured around the tiny villages before slipping out to brown wastelands and dusty wadis. Beauty and desolation, life and death. Afghanistan.
Derek called over the headset, “Three minutes to LZ!”
Palmer and George popped up. The rest of the team turned on, going from sleepy laziness to full speed in a half second. Jackets and poncho liners were stowed, shoved into packs. Books and music players disappeared. They strapped on their gear, tightened their helmets, and readied their weapons.
Kris tried to keep up. His breath fogged in front of his face. He couldn’t feel his cheeks. His lungs felt like they were frozen from the inside.
“One minute!”
Ahead, a bend in the river cut a wide, barren portion of the valley off from the rest of the villages. The helo banked hard and spun. Tilted, wobbled left and right.
Finally, they set down with a lurch on the dusty ground.
Kris felt like he was in a movie, stuck between too slow and fast-forward. He saw the rotors spin outside the open cargo door, the whoosh-whoosh-whoosh seeming to come from underwater, distorted and fractured. Men moved, scrambling, grabbing rifles. Running toward the cargo door.
They were in Afghanistan, with only the Shura Nazar, whom they had yet to make contact with, as their protectors. They had nothing other than what they carried on the helicopter. A scratchy satellite phone and the helo their only link to the world. After traveling over the pass, they may as well have landed on another planet, in another galaxy.
They were on their own.
Palmer started barking orders and the world snapped into fast-forward. Palmer’s men burst out of the chopper, taking up protective positions. A group of three Afghans started for the chopper, AK-47s in their hands. Behind them, a ring of rusted and bullet-riddled pickup trucks waited, Afghans leaning out of the cabs and the backs of the beds, watching.
Each man held a weapon. Each man stared at the helo, at the team, his eyes dark, his gaze pinched.
George and Palmer strode across the grass-and-dirt field under the watchful eyes of the entire team. Kris saw fingers half-squeezed over triggers on nearly everyone. They were at the coordinates the Shura Nazar had given them. Was this their welcoming party? Or a trap? Kris searched the faces, looking for one he recognized, a photo from the files he’d read backward and forward at Langley.
He should be out there. He’d negotiated the bones of the alliance, had done the legwork to make this happen. He needed be there with George and Palmer.
Haddad held him back. “Wait for the signal.”
In the field, outside the bubble of wind kicked up by the spinning rotors, Palmer shook hands with one of the Afghans. George greeted him next. Their bodies were stiff, and the Afghan in the center glared at them both. He’d shouldered his rifle, but the others hadn’t. Palmer waved to the helo. The signal.
“All right, now it’s showtime.” Haddad looked down at Kris, his deep eyes searing into him. “You’re going to kick ass, Caldera.” He guided Kris out of the chopper, jogging them both out to where Palmer and George waited. Haddad kept close, inside Kris’s shadow, his weapon at the low and ready.
The rotors still spun, kicking dust into the air and blowing icy wind in cyclones around the raggedy group. Towering over them, steel-gray mountains soared, like the valley was the dungeon of the earth.
Kris spoke in Dari, holding out both hands for the Afghan man to take, to grasp. “Thank you for your hospitality. We’re the Americans. We’re here to help you destroy the Taliban.”
“Welcome to Afghanistan. I am Fazl,” the man said. He took Kris’s hands and drew him into an embrace. He smiled, his teeth square and yellowed, gaps where some had fallen out. “The Shura Nazar welcomes you to our fight.”
The rest of the team unloaded the helicopter as fast as they’d loaded it, hauling all the gear they’d packed for their invasion into the back of the Afghans’ trucks. Haddad reappeared with his ruck and Kris’s. He kept Kris’s at his feet, even though Kris beckoned for it.
Fazl told Kris they had been sent by General Khan to pick up the Americans. “We did not believe you would truly come,” he said. “But you’re here now. I will take you to your new home, in the village.” Fazl pointed up the hillside across the river, past a switchback. Mud huts squatted close together, overlooking the valley and scattered fields with limp crops shivering in the cold. Higher up the hill, a compound had been built into the stone. Once it had been painted white, but shrapnel and wind had chipped the paint down to the concrete blocks. “The general will see you tomorrow.”
One of the trucks didn’t actually work. It was tethered to another by a length of frayed rope, which snapped under the combined load. Two of Palmer’s men had to unpack a length of webbing and re-strap them together. The rest of the pickups strained to haul the gear, broken struts scraping as shocks compressed to the limit.
Palmer ordered his men to jog alongside up to the village. George and Ryan slid into the front cab of one of the trucks. Phillip and Jim nervously strapped the communications gear to the back of one and eyeballed the river. Derek volunteered to stay at the helo and shut it down. Someone would come get him later.
“Get on the back.” Haddad nudged Kris toward the truck with the fewest bullet holes and the least scraping brakes.
“I’ll walk, I’m fine.”
“We’re at six thousand feet above sea level. Going up that hill? We’re all going to be puking in ten minutes. But we need you to be solid.” Haddad took in the brakes and the suspension and the way the engine ground as the Afghan driver tried to move forward with the weight of their gear in the back. “This truck is the best.”
“What about the river? How are you guys going to cross that?”
“We’ll wade. I’ll stay beside this truck. C’mon, get up in there.”
“I can handle myself, Sergeant.”
“I know you can. But you also have to handle all of us, too. We need you to be at your peak, especially now.”
He could only hold Haddad’s stare for so long. Even through his sunglasses, there was something there, some intensity that made Kris turn away. Haddad’s gaze seemed to go right through him, like an X-ray that turned him inside out. He felt naked, down to his bones, under that gaze. “Fine.”
The trucks lurched toward the river, kicking up dust that made them all cough. Palmer’s men pulled their undershirts up, covering their noses and mouths and making them look like bandits from the Old West.
From the air, the river had seemed calm, almost tranquil. As they bounced and jerked closer, Kris spotted the whitecaps breaking around submerged boulders and the rush of the current swirling in eddies. He stared at Haddad, running beside him and the pickup.
Haddad frowned at the river. He looked up at Kris. “Hold on tight.”
“What about you?”
The truck accelerated, its engine wailing as the driver floored it, heading for the riverbank. Jerking left and right, they bounced over the rocky embankment and plunged into the river. Water splashed over the cab, hitting Kris. He clung to his ruck, the truck, the crates jammed in beside him.
The engines screamed underwater as the trucks rumbled through the river, water rising to the doors. They had been modified for water crossing, but still. The river current pushed at his truck, and Kris felt the tires sliding off the rocky river bottom, felt them jerk and lurch more sideways than forward.
He watched Haddad, his heart in his throat, fingers scraping on the rusted frame of the truck. Haddad struggled in the water, his rifle up to his chest. He stared at Kris, striding as fast as he could against the current.
Kris wanted to reach for him. Pull him to safety.
Haddad was a two-hundred-pound super soldier. What could Kris really do to help him?
Still, he watched, holding his breath, until Haddad stumbled from the river and up the muddy bank after Kris’s truck roared free. Wide arcs of frigid mud splattered over the truck bed. Kris felt it hit his cheek, saw it splatter his jacket.
True to Haddad’s word, ten minutes into the drive up the hillside, Haddad, Palmer, and the rest of the soldiers started puking. They didn’t stop jogging, just leaned over and hurled into the dust. As the road rose and they climbed up the first ridge, they aimed their vomit for the gorge while trying not to slip and fall to their deaths.
The road could barely be called a road. On one side the mountain rose, sheer rock, and, far above, ice. On the other, a sickening drop, a ravine that went straight down, tangled with dead brush and a thousand lines of snowmelt meandering down the foreboding mountains. It was wide enough for one horse, barely wide enough for the trucks. Tracks etched into the earth over centuries showed lines and lines of single-file horses had marched up and down the ridge. Deep ruts where hooves had struck caught the tires, making them spin out, lurch heart-stoppingly close to the road’s edge, nearly plummeting over. One driver spun out, and the rear passenger tires hovered over empty air and nothingness before he careened back onto the trail.
Kris would rather puke his guts out than fall to his death on the back of a bullet-riddled death trap, but when he tried to hop out, Haddad shook his head. He was right there, always right beside Kris and the busted gap where there should have been a tailgate.
Eventually, the convoy turned onto a smaller trail, winding into a narrow mountain pass that was ball-shrivelingly terrifying. The team walked single file behind the trucks as each picked its way through frozen mud and fallen rocks. Finally, they arrived at the village.
Stone huts squatted on either side of the dirt track. Mud covered the walls, insulating the homes through the bitterly cold winters. Gray dust swirled through the air, kicked up by the trucks’ tires. Thin men leaned on hand-hewn wooden tools, watching the convoy as dirty kids played with deflated soccer balls with faded Chinese characters.
Beyond the village, tucked into the hillside, two buildings formed a larger compound overlooking the valley. A rutted, dead field, more dirt and broken concrete than anything else, spread in front of the compound. Decrepit tanks, remnants of the Soviet invasion, were parked at angles, pointing down the road and overlooking the village. If they tried to fire any ordnance, the tanks would blow apart.
Another team of Afghans awaited them, including an older man who was clearly in charge. He wore traditional kameez pants and a camouflage jacket. His beard was short and scraggly. After the convoy parked in the dirt field, Fazl and the Afghan warmly embraced.
Kris stumbled from the back of the pickup, every bone in his body jarred loose from the rough ride up the mountain. Haddad was right there, steadying him. Kris squeezed Haddad’s arm and headed for Fazl and his friend. “Salaam,” he said, one hand on his chest.
Both eyebrows on the Afghan’s face rose. He stared at Kris, not speaking.
What was it? What about him screamed gay? He didn’t think he was aggressively homosexual, not now with his double jackets and Haddad’s beanie shoved on his head. He wasn’t strutting a catwalk, wasn’t catcalling like he was the wildest of drag queens from the Village. He didn’t have eyeliner or lip gloss on. Frustration simmered within him.
There was a twinkle in the Afghan’s eyes, though. He chuckled, and then embraced Kris, returning the greeting, speaking in Dari. “Did America send children to fight their wars?”
Goddamn it. Kris forced a smile. He rubbed a hand over his chin. Despite not shaving since he’d left DC, he had only a scattered few hairs poking through. “I am jealous of you,” he said, pointing to the Afghan’s beard. “Mine does not grow.” And, of course, he was now in a country that judged men by the thickness of their beards.
The Afghan laughed again. “My name is Ghasi. I am the manager of this compound. It was General Massoud’s Panjshir headquarters.” Pride sang through Ghasi’s words. His eyes glittered.
“We thank you for your hospitality. To stay at the headquarters of the great Massoud.” Kris bowed his head. He held out both hands to Ghasi. Ghasi clasped his hands, squeezing his fingers.
Ghasi introduced his staff, mostly kids from the village who would be managing the compound for their stay. “They will clean, cook, do your laundry. Anything you need.”
Fazl had summoned a group of Shura Nazar soldiers from seemingly nowhere, and they helped Palmer and his men unload the trucks. George and Ryan hung back, eyeing Kris as he chatted in Dari and held hands with Ghasi.
“May I introduce my fellow officers?” Kris beckoned George and Ryan over and introduced both men to Ghasi. George and Ryan shook Ghasi’s hand stiffly.
Ghasi stepped back. “This main compound is yours.” He pointed to a smaller hut set off from the main cluster. “That is where General Khan’s men will stay. They will protect you. The rest is for you. Your headquarters in Afghanistan.”
“Let’s take a look.”
Ghasi led George, Ryan, Palmer, and Kris around the compound. The first building was an old stable, a C-shaped line of bare concrete rooms with a dirt yard in the center. Palmer and George called out rooms for their equipment, storing the food and essentials on one side, gear and medical equipment on the other.
The second building, set beyond the first, was a rectangle of concrete with Soviet-style skinny double glass doors lining the front façade. The main floor was split, a long foyer overlooking the desiccated courtyard between the two buildings. Beyond the entrance, and down a handful of steps, a sunken central space loomed large, one wall lined with bookshelves and stuffed with old books, their spines etched in Arabic scripts.
Six rooms branched off the center space, with curtains nailed over their openings. A narrow hallway, with steps going farther down, led to two smaller rooms set off the main building by a breezeway. One was the tiny kitchen. The other had a square toilet—a hole in the ground—a spigot sticking out of the wall, and a bucket.
The center space was the perfect place to set up their nerve center. Radio and communications center, intel collection point, and planning station, their nerve center would have someone from the team present around the clock. They’d be able to get radio and satellite reception if they put their dishes and antennae on the roof.
The six rooms off the nerve center would be sleeping quarters for everyone. Two men to a room, plus their gear. It was going to be a tight fit all around.
Even though Palmer’s guys had just puked their guts out, they were already hauling gear into the compound. Their crates of MREs and enough bottled water for an army went to the stables. All comms equipment went to the second building, their headquarters, and Jim and Phillip started working with Warrick, Palmer’s communications sergeant, to set up the array of computers, radios, satellites, generators, and surveillance equipment.
Almost as an afterthought, everyone dropped their rucks in the room they claimed as their own.
Kris searched for his ruck in the dwindling pile of gear in the dirt courtyard.
It was conspicuously missing.
He caught sight Haddad winding his way into their headquarters, hauling two rucks, one in each hand. Kris started after him, but stopped when he saw George pull Haddad aside, say some words, and gesture to Kris’s pack. Haddad nodded, once, twice, and then again. He jogged down the concrete steps as George headed back out.
The Afghan soldiers loaned from General Khan, waiting with Ghasi, watched everything like they were seeing a feast spread out before them. Most Afghans lived on fifty dollars a year. Kris and the team had brought not just millions in cash, but millions of dollars’ worth of gear.
Kris grabbed one of the money-stuffed duffels and slipped the first packet of mission cash out. “Agha Ghasi,” he said, using the honorific agha. “I know these men are proud fighters, great men of your forces.”
“They are, Gul Bahar American.”
Kris gritted his teeth. Gul Bahar meant “spring flower” in Dari. “I would like to offer to pay them one hundred dollars a week to keep us safe. Us, and our equipment.” He handed out cash to each soldier, pressing the crisp American bill into their palms. American foreign policy, hard at work.
The Afghan soldiers’ eyes lit up.
“That is a good start,” Ghasi said carefully. “But General Khan will want to negotiate. The rest of the army need provisions. Food, winter clothes, ammunition. Weapons. Salaries.”
“We will outfit the Shura Nazar. I promise.”
Ghasi squinted. “I’ve heard American promises before.”
American foreign policy, with all its warts and wrinkles.
Kris held out his hand, palm up. “I’m here now, General. I keep promises.”
Ghasi clasped his hand, shaking it gently. He smiled. “Gul Bahar, I have lived three of your lives. Your country makes and breaks promises as the sun rises and sets. You are here now, but for how long? How long until your promises start to break? I will never understand America. But…” He sighed. “You are here now. So we will see. General Khan will see you tomorrow.”
Phillip and Warrick spent hours setting up the communications array, at least enough so that George and Ryan could send a message back to DC and to CENTCOM, confirming their arrival in-country.
The first order of business, after contacting Langley, was to set up the signals intercept array. With the signals intercept, they could break into the Taliban’s radio frequencies and start listening in on their enemy. Back in the US, it would have been easy. In the Panjshir, working with a single generator and one helicopter’s worth of gear, it was a laborious process.
Satellite dishes, from large to tiny, poked out from under camouflage netting on the roof of their headquarters, and a generator rumbled beside the dishes and antennae, next to a solar-powered battery backup.
The nerve center looked like a computer repair shop had exploded. Bare light bulbs strung from electrical cords hanging on nails cast long shadows over everything. Empty crates became stools and tables, lining the walls around the main room.
Kris finally found his pack, and Haddad, in one of the tiny curtained rooms as the sun was setting, throwing long lines of tawny light through the open patio doors at the front of the compound. The building had a musty scent, as if it had been locked up for too long, unused and unentered. George wanted the doors open, even though it was freezing.
The rooms were cramped and square, with dusty rugs stretched across the floors, faded and worn, and nothing else. The air was cold, damp. The musty smell was stronger in the rooms.
Haddad had emptied his ruck, and what looked like an entire pharmacy was spread out in the tiny room. Medicines, syringes, IV bags, lines, bandages, splints, surgical tools, and more. He had the same basic gear Kris had, a sixty-pound load, plus most of the medical gear for the team. How had he managed to pack all that?
Kris toed a bucket of pool chlorine powder, something that came off the shelf at any Walmart store. “Chlorine? For pools?”
“It will kill anything in the water. We can use it in the bathroom, too. Keep things sanitary. And for drinking. If we have to resort to using it, this will make the water safe to drink for us.”
“I didn’t think it was that easy.”
“Well, it will give us a bad stomach upset. The cure is only slightly better than the disease.” Haddad shrugged. “I’m going to set up a makeshift clinic down in one of the stables so everyone has access to what they need, whenever they need it.” He frowned at the rest of the gear he’d spread around—his ammo and spare batteries, night vision goggles and scopes, clothing and GPS and electronics. “Kind of a tight fit in here.”
Kris’s stomach clenched. “I’ll… I’ll find somewhere else to crash. I just came to get this—” He hefted his ruck, holding his breath.
“All the other rooms are full.” Haddad kept stacking medical supplies in his arms. He didn’t look at Kris.
What had George said to Haddad? Had he warned Haddad away, told him to be careful of the gay one? Was all this gear, everywhere, Haddad’s way of saying he wouldn’t fit, he wasn’t welcome?
Kris lifted his chin. Fine then. Add Haddad’s name to the list of people he would prove wrong. “I’ll figure something out. Thanks for bringing my ruck in, but I can handle it myself.”
Haddad’s hand on his elbow stopped him. “It’s going to be a tight fit, but we’ll make it work.”