smell, her touch, when he was woken up. He looked up to see Dan, his M82 in hand.
'Captain, sorry to wake you up.'
David looked as if he was ready to murder Dan.
'This better be good.'
Dan reached over and handed over David's M4 and vest.
'We're under attack.'
That got David's attention, and he grabbed his gear and rushed out of his cabin. Mike had also just come out of his cabin next door, wearing a Kevlar vest over his t-shirt, carrying an M4 as well. The CIA officer shouted out at David as he saw him.
'The Taliban must have gone nuts. Trying to attack us here is suicide!'
There were soldiers milling around everywhere. The members of the small TF121 detachment were `guests' here, sharing the base with its usual occupants, an Army Ranger unit. Given the secretive nature of their HVT hunts, and the time they spent outside in the mountains, David and his men had never really got to know the Rangers too well. But now David saw their Commanding Officer, Major James Lafferty, roaring orders to his men.
'You there, reinforce the western side! I want snipers covering every angle.'
David jogged over to him. Compared to the lean, wiry SEAL, the Ranger Major looked like a giant pitbull.
'What's up?'
'Two of my boys are down. Some Taliban must have sneaked in and attacked our sentries.'
David considered that for a minute. He had been fast asleep but there was no way he could have slept through gunfire. James must have read his mind.
'They bit them. We never picked them up till they were too close.'
David took in the bizarre details.
'Did we get them?'
James looked down straight at his eyes, and David thought that he saw fear in the giant man's eyes.
'The boys pumped them full of bullets, but get this, the two of them fell down, then got back up and ran away.'
'All clear!'
The Ranger who had shouted sounded scared, and David could sense that as word of the raid got around, everyone was spooked. It was one thing to deal with an enemy who shot at you, and reassuringly stayed dead when you shot back. What did you do with enemies who bit you and then got back up when you shot them? He saw Mike a few feet away. The CIA officer had seen his share of crazy stuff, but this was something too weird even for him. The Rangers were now busy tending to the two wounded men, who were bleeding profusely from bites to their hands and necks.
'Get them Medevaced now!'
The next morning, they were airlifted to Kabul and then were on a flight to Ramstein airbase in Germany, when doctors at the base in Kabul said they just could not deal with the strange symptoms they were seeing. When the flights landed, horrified medics found everyone on board bit and scratched by their patients.
David and his team were out on the road again. He had heard that he was being recommended for a Navy Cross for the mission that had taken out Mullah Omar and Al-Zawahiri. Medals were always nice, but the biggest thing on his mind was the fact that he was finally doing something that mattered. His father, a New York firefighter, had perished in the rubble of the World Trade Center, and David had dedicated every single moment of his life since that day to avenging his father, and the thousands of others who had died on 9/11. He didn't look like much a warrior, standing five feet eight, and with a lean body, but what he lacked in size, he more than made up in determination and speed. He had hung in there when stronger and more experienced men had quit all around him at SEAL training in Coronado, and then he had taken his revenge in missions around the world-from Iraq to Afghanistan.
Mike was right by his side.
'Do you reckon there's any truth to this at all?'
'Mike, I've seen all kinds of terrorists and tough guys. They all like to talk it up but believe me, when you shoot them, they all stay down. Our boys must have been just panicked. Most of them are just kids on their first combat tour. I bet they never even hit those Taliban once.'
Rumours had been spreading like wildfire all over Afghanistan. Tales of black-turbaned Taliban who had come back from the dead, and who could not be killed. Monsters who had superhuman strength and speed, and were rampaging through whole villages at night, biting and scratching people and then disappearing into the mountains. David and his team were to check out the last reported sighting. Their brief was simple. Find out if these mythical `undead' Taliban existed, and if they did, then to shoot a few of them dead to prove to the Afghan people that they were just a figment of someone's imagination, or as David suspected, the Taliban propaganda machine in overdrive.
They were an hour into their hike through the hills when Rob spotted some movement behind them in the dark. David turned around to see a black turbaned man standing on a small hillock just fifty feet behind them.
How the hell had anyone got on their tail without their noticing it?
David brought his M4's scope to his eyes. With his night vision optics on, what he saw was bathed in a ghostly green light. Their stalker had a black turban tied around his head in the fashion the Taliban favoured, but the rest of him scarcely looked human. Despite the cold, he was wearing tattered clothes, revealing a body covered in boils, pus and blood. His skin was a sickly yellow and his mouth was open, revealing teeth with jagged, sharp edges.
'Dan, drop the bastard!'
Dan brought up his M82 to his shoulder but even before he could take aim, the man had disappeared from sight, moving faster than David had seen any man move. Just then Rob screamed, an ugly, keening sound. David turned to see him on the ground, a black-turbaned man on his chest, leaning over and biting his shoulders and chest. David's M4 was up in a flash and he fired a three round burst into the man. The shots sent the man sprawling against the rock face, but then to David's horror, the man got up. Close up, he looked even more horrible than the other man David had seen through his scope. He smelt like a cross between a dead mouse and a toilet that has not been flushed or cleaned for some time. His eyes were focused on David, and his lips were pursed back, revealing the sharp, blood-covered teeth.
Then, he leapt at Mike with surprising speed and bit him in the arm. The CIA officer had his handgun out and fired three 9MM rounds at point blank range even as the man's teeth sank into his left hand. The black turbaned man fell to the ground, and then seemingly jumped off the edge. David peered over to see him climbing down the sheer rock face. He then saw the two wounded men on the ground, blood oozing from their wounds. David had never been a particularly religious man, but he crossed himself, shuddering at the horror of what he had just seen with his own eyes.
TWO
Hina Rahman got up to get a cup of coffee, her creaking joints reminding her that she had come a long way from the days when she had been the heartthrob of every boy in college. Now she was just the crotchety old Professor who nagged them to do their assignments. Nobody would have told her that to her face, but while her joints may have weakened with age, her hearing was still sharp, and as she briefly looked in the mirror, her features were still sharp and the greying hair looked good on her. She savoured the hot liquid as she turned on the TV. Every news channel seemed to have only one item to report, the so-called Afghan Flu. She left CNN on as she set the dinner table. Over the clinking of glasses and plates, she heard the somber voice of the newscaster.
'In less than three days since it's first appearance, what doctors are calling the Afghan Flu is spreading like wildfire. Medical authorities are saying that there is still no cause for panic, but have warned against any travel to Afghanistan or Pakistan.'
