Dead on Arrival

surface-to-air missiles and mortars, men hidden in the caves and rocks surrounding the meadow, could do significant damage.

‘How do you know about this airfield?’ the chieftain said. When he spoke he looked at the interpreter, never at Emma, even though he could tell that the interpreter was only telling him what Emma said. The chieftain was a man who found it unfathomable that a woman could be speaking to him about a serious matter like this.

Emma pointed upward and said through the interpreter, ‘We have eyes in the sky. Satellites and spy planes.’ She wasn’t sure the chieftain knew what a satellite was, but she knew he’d be too proud to ask.

‘And for doing this, what do I receive?’

‘Missiles and mortars,’ Emma said. ‘And a chance to vanquish your enemy.’

The chieftain smiled. ‘You can’t eat missiles.’

‘Three thousand dollars for going to the airfield,’ Emma said. ‘Five thousand dollars for every troopship you destroy and two thousand for every helicopter. In American dollars.’

That was an incredible amount of money for people in this part of the world, and Emma knew that the percentage the chieftain would share with his people would be minuscule. She also knew the chieftain would lie about how many aircraft he had destroyed, but that was irrelevant. The only thing that mattered was disrupting Russian operations.

The chieftain didn’t say anything. He looked down at the map lying in the dirt and, with a cracked, blackened fingernail, traced the route to the meadow.

‘Three thousand for a helicopter,’ he said.

Negotiations completed, Emma had one of the Rangers contact their base camp to send back the helicopter and offload the weapons, but she was informed that there would be a six-hour delay for some unspecified reason. Weather, mechanical problems, Russian activity — it didn’t really matter; it was out of her control. She went into the tent where her men were waiting and began to open a packet of what used to be called C-rations but were then called M.R.E.s — meals, ready to eat. She’d always suspected the name was some bureaucrat’s idea of a joke. She was trying to open a can of peaches with the ridiculous little can opener that came in the packet when she heard a commotion outside the tent, a man shouting and people whistling and clapping. ‘Henderson,’ she said to one of the Rangers, ‘see what’s happening.’

Henderson was the ranking Ranger, and he and the interpreter came back a couple minutes later. ‘They’re going to stone a woman,’ Henderson said. ‘She committed adultery.’ Henderson was a hardened combat veteran, but this was something that seemed to shock even him.

Emma sat there a moment, rubbing her eyes with the thumb and forefinger of her right hand. She knew she should do nothing. She was under strict orders not to interfere in local affairs, and in particular she knew her mission was to make an ally out of this particular chieftain. But she couldn’t do nothing.

Emma rose and walked out of the tent. Behind her she heard Henderson say, ‘Ma’am. Where are you going, ma’am?’

Emma ignored Henderson. She stood there looking at the scene in what passed for a village square. A woman was standing there, her hands bound behind her back, a terrified look on her face. A man was standing next to her, screaming to the mob that had gathered. Emma didn’t know if the man was a religious leader, a judge, or the woman’s husband. As the man was talking — raving, actually — she saw boys placing stones in baskets and cooking pots. The boys’ eyes gleamed with anticipation.

Emma looked around for the chieftain and finally saw him. His butt was resting on the rim of the village well, and he was smoking a cigarette as he chatted casually with another man. At one point, he gestured toward the bound woman in the square and laughed and shook his head. Emma guessed that he was saying the Afghani equivalent of ‘The dumb bitch, can you believe it?’

Emma turned toward the interpreter, a doe-eyed man with a receding chin, and said, ‘Come with me,’ and began walking toward the chieftain.

‘Ma’am, you can’t interfere,’ Henderson, the Ranger sergeant, said. When Emma ignored him, he muttered, ‘Goddammit all’ under his breath, then said to his men, ‘Get your weapons.’

Emma had been with the four-man Ranger unit for three weeks now, and when the unit was first assembled, the men had been told she was in charge. They hadn’t been told her rank or what organization she belonged to, but the bird colonel who briefed them told them she was the man. The soldiers figured that the tall blond gal was from one of the spy shops and it was probably some kinda political thing that the army had to go along with, but they had a hard time believing that they were going into the badlands with a young good-looking woman leading their squad. They’d follow her orders, of course — they were Rangers — but what they really expected was that Emma would listen to their sergeant and do whatever he said. It didn’t take them long to figure out that she was bright enough to ask for the sergeant’s input, but in the end she was the one who made the decisions. Emma had, even then, all those indefinable qualities of leadership that inspire confidence and obedience and loyalty, and after only a short period the Rangers were accustomed to following her lead. But now she was doing something that the soldiers knew was wrong — or at least wrong from the perspective of their mission.

Emma strode up to the chieftain. He raised his haunches off the rim of the well and looked down at her; he was six-foot-six. Emma took the veil off so he could see her face — she hated that damn veil — and while looking directly at the chieftain, she said to her interpreter, ‘Tell him I want him to stop this.’

She saw the rage forming in the chieftain’s face; women didn’t speak to him that way. He looked as if he might strike Emma, but he restrained himself. He said something the interpreter translated as ‘This is a tribal matter. Go back to your tent, woman.’

Emma suspected that if she threatened not to pay him or give him the missiles, he’d agree and then stone the woman as soon as the Americans left. She also knew she had to come up with some solution that would allow the chieftain to save face. He’d kill Emma and her men before he’d be humiliated by her in front of his tribe.

Emma looked over her shoulder. The man who had been speaking in the center of the square had stopped. The condemned woman had slumped to the ground. The villagers were all looking over at the chieftain and Emma. Most of the villagers at this point, even the women, held stones in their hands.

‘Tell him,’ Emma said to her interpreter, ‘that the American army wants that woman. Tell him we need a … a cook.’

Henderson, who was now standing next to Emma, said, ‘Ma’am, you can’t do this.’

‘Tell him,’ Emma said, ignoring Henderson, looking directly into the chieftain’s eyes, ‘that we’ll pay him a thousand dollars for the woman.’

The chieftain looked at Emma, then over at his people, then back at Emma again. ‘The woman has a daughter,’ the chieftain said.

‘Tell him we’ll train the daughter to be a cook too. We’ll pay five hundred for her.’

‘Jesus Christ, ma’am,’ Henderson said.

When they returned to their base camp with the woman and her daughter, the bird colonel in charge chewed out Emma as only a bird colonel can, then asked her what in the holy hell they were supposed to do with an Afghani woman and her daughter. Thanks to the Red Cross and to people Emma contacted back in the States, a year later the woman and her daughter were in America. The woman never acclimated to her new country and, oddly enough, seemed to resent Emma for what she had done. The daughter, however, thrived and was now the assistant manager of a bank in Maryland. The daughter would tell Anisa Aziz that Emma could be trusted.

But Anisa didn’t call. The next day Emma returned to Washington, D.C.

33

DeMarco made the mistake of telling Mahoney that he was going to Long Island to talk to the air marshal who had killed Youseff Khalid. It was a mistake because Mahoney said, ‘Well, hell, since you’re going up north anyway, stop by and see Flynn and have dinner with Father Mike.’

This meant DeMarco would now have to leave D.C. at the crack of dawn, see the air marshal in New York, then catch another plane to Boston — and have to endure the heightened security at three airports instead of two. After he met with Flynn and had dinner with the priest, he’d then have to spend the night in Boston because the