that, he talks it better than me.’ Looked like somebody stole his pet camel.” Gaffan stuck out his lower lip in an exaggerated expression of sadness. Everyone at the table laughed now, Wells too, harder and harder, some pent-up emotion in him pouring out.
“The kicker is, ‘bout ten minutes later, old Abdullah starts blabbing to Cap and won’t shut up. True?”
Hughley nodded. “He was our best source last year.”
JOINED BY TWO APACHE ATTACK HELICOPTERS, the Black Hawks turned east, diving as they left the base. When they leveled off, they were just two hundred feet above the ground, low enough that Wells could see the dust kicked up by a rusty jalopy as it rolled down the two-lane road that angled away from the base. Staying low made them harder to hit with rocket-propelled grenades or surface-to-air missiles.
To the south, a road dead-ended at a massive garbage pile, a hundred-foot-tall monument to Afghanistan’s poverty. No fires were visible on the pile, but a haze of black smoke drifted from the trash. The stench of sewage filled the cabin as the Black Hawk flew through the smoke’s inky tendrils. Women and children trudged over the smoldering debris, looking for rags or scrap metal, anything they might trade for dinner.
In a field nearby, scrawny boys played soccer with a makeshift ball. Wells could see a breakaway develop even before the players did. A kid in a raggedy blue T-shirt cut past his defender, awaiting a pass from the midfield—
But before Wells could see what happened next, the game faded behind him. These Black Hawks cruised at 150 miles an hour. Wells decided to imagine that the kid had scored, in keeping with his newly optimistic outlook. Maybe he should write a self-help book. The power of positive thinking. And shooting first.
The fearsome mountains of the Hindu Kush jutted ahead of the helicopter. The peaks, capped with snow even in summer, stretched hundreds of miles to the northeast. Near Afghanistan’s border with China, they rose above 20,000 feet. Around here they were closer to 15,000 feet, still higher than any in the continental United States. The CIA and the Pentagon believed that bin Laden was hiding in the Kush or just south, in Pakistan’s Peshawar Province. But without solid intelligence, finding anyone in the Kush was impossible. The range was an endless maze of valleys and caves, among the most difficult places on earth to search. Snow fell by October. By December the dirt tracks that the Afghans optimistically called roads were impassable. The guerrillas holed up in tiny villages and waited for spring, knowing that even the best-equipped American units could not touch them. In the summer, the Talibs moved between the mountains and Kabul, planting bombs, hijacking supply trucks, and generally wreaking havoc.
And they were getting more dangerous. A month before, fifty Taliban had attacked a police station east of Kabul. When a rapid-reaction team from Bagram responded, a second band of guerrillas ambushed it. Eight American soldiers died.
Then mortar fire hit the 10th Mountain Division at Camp Blessing, an outpost near the Pakistani border. Six men died. Mortar attacks weren’t uncommon in Afghanistan, but attacks this accurate were. So two squads from camp had hiked into the mountains to talk to the villagers who lived north of the base. Everywhere they went, the soldiers offered gifts: medical supplies, pens and paper, and candy — Afghans loved Tic Tacs, for reasons no one could figure. The idea was to keep the locals friendly, or at least neutral, and get information about the source of the mortars. In most villages, the squads were met with tea, suspicious looks, and little else.
But in a nameless village twenty miles north of Camp Blessing, the soldiers got a surprise. Bashir Jan, the village’s headman, told them about a guerrilla outpost to the west. Besides fifty Taliban, the camp contained several “white fighters,” he said. And why had he given up this precious information? The guerrillas were stealing the village’s goats and refusing to pay, he said.
“The guys said he was furious,” Holmes told Wells. “Couldn’t have been madder if they’d taken one of his wives.”
“Never look a gift goat in the mouth,” Wells said.
Bashir’s report was the one that had spurred Exley to get the satellite photographs. Now the mercenaries, whoever they were, were about get a call from Companies A and B. Two companies from the 10th Mountain Division, including the unit that had first discovered the camp, would provide tactical support. The plan didn’t make the 10th Mountain happy. Their guys were the ones who’d died in the mortar attack, and they had developed the original intel. As far as they were concerned, they deserved the kill.
But the terrain demanded an air attack, as Wells had realized immediately when he’d seen the satellite photographs. Armored vehicles couldn’t get through, and an assault on foot was impossible. The camp-ground was hundreds of feet above the valley. Guerrilla snipers would devastate attacking infantry. Plus the mountains in this part of the Kush were riddled with tunnel networks. If they got advance warning, the guerrillas would disappear into their underground labyrinth before they could be destroyed.
Thus the 10th Mountain had been pulled back like a rottweiler on a choke chain, and the Special Forces ordered in. The helicopters would strike at dusk, destroying the camp before the Talibs could respond. Speed would be key. If the operation worked as planned, the guerrillas would panic. The Special Forces would cut off the caves. With that route blocked, the guerrillas would flee down the mountain, into the unfriendly arms of the 10th Mountain, whose men would wait at the base of the valley.
A high-risk operation, Wells thought. But the soldiers in these helicopters had the best chance in the world of pulling it off. And they had a secret weapon.
THE SUN WAS LOW as the four-helicopter convoy reached Jalalabad, one hundred miles east of Kabul. From here, they would fly northeast along the Pech River and into the mountains. One of the Apaches had briefly flown over the valley two days before, the only live visual recon of the campsite. More overflights might have spooked the guerrillas.
Wells looked at his watch. 1840. They should be at Chonesh in less than an hour, assuming nothing went wrong. An hour after that, they’d know where they stood. If they hadn’t broken the camp by then, they would probably be stuck in a firefight, with little chance for reinforcements until the morning.
Afghanistan was eight and a half hours ahead of Washington, so Exley was probably at work right now, Wells thought. He pictured her in their suite in Tysons Corner, sipping coffee from the ridiculous mugs that Shafer had bought. She knew this mission was happening tonight, and though she hadn’t asked for details, she had to know it wouldn’t be easy. Yet she’d given him her blessing to go, encouraged him even. Because she’d known he needed the action, needed to feel useful.
In truth, the Special Forces were doing him a favor by letting him participate in this mission. Technically, Wells was replacing B Company’s second medic, who had been shot in the leg two weeks earlier and was recovering in a military hospital in Germany. But Special Forces units were often short a soldier or two. Initially, Wells had worried he might distract the other men in the unit, who’d fought together long enough that they knew one another’s moves instinctively.
The night before, he’d told Holmes he’d sit out the attack if Holmes thought he didn’t belong. “No hard feelings if you don’t want me, Glen,” Wells said.
“You kidding?”
“What do you mean?”
“You gonna make me say it out loud? These guys love you. You’re better for morale than the Cowboys cheerleaders.”
“Really?” Despite himself Wells had felt a flush of pride.
“John, look, we’ve got some history. I don’t pretend to know you all that well, but it’s obvious, what happened in New York is all twisted in your head. Put aside the politics for a minute and think on what you did. The people you saved. That’s what these guys see. Believe me. Hughley wants you out there tomorrow. I do too.”
1910. THE PECH RIVER FLOWED shallow and fast beneath the Black Hawk, its clear water reflecting the gold of the sun’s dying rays. Two children stood beside the river, waving their thin brown arms metronomically as the helicopter roared by.
The Black Hawk banked left, turning north into a narrow valley, hidden from the sun by a crumbling rock ridge. In the sudden darkness, the helicopter’s gunners hunched intently over their 7.62-caliber mini-guns.
In these valleys, the ride got dangerous. Fly too high, you opened yourself to a lucky shot with an RPG or a SAM. Fly too low, especially at night, you could get taken out by a canyon wall. The topo charts for these valleys
