bittersweet memory compared to the foul stench of the man. Only hours before, in the relative safety of Camp Bullwhip, she had joked about the “sweaty-outhouse” smell of insurgents. Now, it made her want to vomit.
As her eyes slowly became accustomed to the light, she could make out the raw, peeling face of her yak driver. He’d been badly burned and wore a rancid bandage that looped over his head and under his chin. The sickening smell came from some form of infection as much as his lack of hygiene. Karen guessed him to be in his late twenties, but he was already missing most of his top teeth.
“ Tik-brik!” he commanded again in what she realized was English. He wanted her to take a break.
He raised a robed arm and pointed at an outcropping of rocks behind them, along the narrow excuse for a trail. To their right, gray stone rose up for thousands of feet. To their left, the thin band of rubble that passed for a path fell away into a gray nothingness filled with fog and the crash of a river far below.
“You go!” the man ordered again. He carried a roll of pink toilet paper on a leather cord draped over his shoulder. It was a sort of status symbol in a land where many still used a handful of stones to cleanse themselves.
He pointed with his Kalashnikov and tapped the toilet paper with the other hand to get his point across.
The yak heaved a shuddering sigh, relieved to be rid of its load. Hunt began to shiver uncontrollably, blinking to keep her balance on the narrow bit of rock and loose debris. They’d trained her for so many different scenarios back at Camp Perry-but being strapped to a packsaddle wasn’t one of them.
She pointed at the toilet paper with a trembling finger. The man shook his head emphatically and shoved her, pointing his rifle at a pile of rocks that was presumably supposed to serve as her outhouse.
There were other men up ahead along the trail with a dozen other yaks and donkeys. Some of the pack animals bristled with guns; others had tarped loads she couldn’t identify. The fog and the way the trail curved made it impossible to see more than twenty meters in either direction. She assumed there were even more men around the corner. The ones she could see were similarly dressed to her toilet-paper-wearing tormentor and, she had no doubt, smelled just as disgusting. They ignored her as if she wasn’t there, tending to their animals or weapons.
“You make fast!” the blistered insurgent barked as Karen picked her way around the head-high rock pile fifteen feet away. She expected him to follow her, but was relieved when he stayed at his yak.
She had no idea when they’d give her another chance so Karen took the opportunity to try and relieve herself. Her time at Camp Perry-and other, less well-known sites-had trained most of the shyness out of her. More times than she cared to remember, she and the other students had been made to squat on a raised platform with a simple hole cut in the center to “do their business.” Such acts had the effect of either stripping away hang-ups about privacy or pressing them so far back into the psyche that they were bound to cause some sort of mental illness in the future. No matter how many times a moderately well-adjusted woman pooped on a tower in front of fifteen classmates, such a delicate act would always be difficult with hateful men standing a few meters away.
Instead of resorting to stones, she ripped off the hip pocket of her BDU pants to clean herself. It was then she realized her captors hadn’t done a very good job of searching her.
Folded in her back pocket, sealed in a clear plastic pouch, was a rayon scarf with an American flag printed on the back. On the other side were printed instructions in six of the local languages-Pashto, Arabic, Farsi, Tajik, and Dari-advising the bearer of the scarf that they were entitled to a handsome reward if they assisted the American who owned it. It was her blood chit, a token to the local populace that she was worth more alive than dead.
Karen searched the other pockets in her baggy BDU pants until she found the stub of an eyebrow pencil. Praising herself for a shred of female vanity, she scratched out a hastily planned message.
“Make fast!” her captor chided again, moving close, but not coming around the rocks. It sounded like “ mekfus.”
“I’m done,” she said in Tajik, hoping the man would revert to his native language. “Just cleaning.”
She weighted the scarf down with a heavy rock so it wouldn’t blow away, but left the bulk of it to flutter in the mountain breeze.
Hitching up her pants, she stumbled quickly around the rocks, working her way back along the edge of the trail before the stinking yak beater could come around and see her message blowing in the wind.
She climbed back on the yak without being told, biting her lip as her captor lashed down the heavy blanket.
She’d heard stories from local women about slavers. But they mostly preyed on young girls. Hunt was dressed in an American military uniform. That would surely make her worth something to someone. She supposed that was why she was still alive.
She shivered, despite the sickening warmth of the yak, and wondered which would be worse, getting her head cut off or living the rest of her life as someone’s slave. All she could do now was pray that they were the last in the pack train and someone friendly-or at least greedy-would find her note.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Mt. Vernon, Virginia
T hibodaux’s BMW rested on its center stand in front of an eighteenth-century redbrick two-story. Quinn estimated the lot to be over five acres, much of that taken up by a fenced Japanese garden, complete with a gurgling stream, wooden footbridge, and stone Shinto torii gates. The nearest home was over a hundred yards away on either side. Thick hedges gave the grounds an added layer of privacy. Lofty oaks and huge silver sycamores threw the driveway into a near constant blanket of cool shade.
A beaked warhorse, the motorcycle was aggressive even in its idleness, coiled as if in anticipation of violent action. Quinn couldn’t help but think it looked lonely, though, without his bike next to it. A few feet away, nearer the house’s forest-green front door, was a Ducati 848 EVO painted a deep blood red. Thibodaux said it was the color of a Bourbon Street whore’s fingernails, but he kept that between himself and Jericho. Shorter and more compact than the BMW, the Ducati was a superbike-with a race fairing and a stock hundred-and-forty-horse Testastretta engine. With its pointed, upthrust sport-bike tail and humped gas tank, it looked like an angry red wasp. Like its owner, the Ducati was graceful, utilitarian, and dangerous.
Without a bike, Quinn had no reason to wear his riding gear. The black Transit jacket, leather pants, stiff Sidi riding boots, kangaroo-hide gloves, and Arai helmet lay in a forlorn pile near Thibodaux’s GS. He wore faded blue jeans, Rockport chukkas, and a gray Under Armour T-shirt that kept him cool in the warm fall weather. Palmer had promised to get him another bike as soon as possible-but it wasn’t happening quite soon enough to suit Quinn.
He busied himself by sitting on the curb and beating himself up over his divorce and prolonged separation from his daughter.
“Tell me why we do this again,” he said, his voice glum.
“ ’Cause we’re good at it?” Thibodaux shrugged massive, rounded shoulders as he did a pushup in the gravel to eye the oil sight glass mounted low on the BMW’s Boxer engine.
The owner of the red Ducati, Emiko Miyagi-Mrs. Miyagi to her two charges-appeared from around the corner of the house. She padded softly in the afternoon shadows of her crescent driveway as if floating an inch above the ground.
“I believe it is much more than that,” she said. “Do you know Ushirogami wo Hikareru?”
Quinn stood, giving her a polite bow. “To have the hair on the back of your neck pulled?”
“That is correct,” Miyagi said. “But the nuance is much deeper. It much more correctly means having to follow a certain path but not quite wanting to do so. Devotion to duty often involves such a feeling
… but, the blade must cut. That is what it is designed for. Is it not?”
“Now…” She pursed her lips and stood stoically with her hands clasped in front, a sure indication she was ready to take the conversation somewhere else.
Jericho sighed again, this time in relief.
“Palmer-san believes it is better for you to remain hidden,” Miyagi said. She had the body of a gymnast, with short, powerful legs and muscular shoulders that belied the narrowness of her frame. Tan cotton slacks hugged the gentle curve of her hips. A black polo shirt hid a mysterious tattoo above her right breast, the edge of which was
