“Good work,” said Brown.
“Ghost Lead, this is Hume, over.”
“Go ahead, John.”
“Jenkins and I got on the Bradley, but we got cut off from Warris and Ramirez in the tunnels. We figured they’d link up with us down here, but they didn’t show up, over.”
“Roger that, we’ll find them.”
“Paul, you get her down there to link up with the chopper?” Brown asked Smith.
“I’m on it.”
“Then I’m with you, Captain, let’s go!”
We rose and jogged off, back into the tunnel, while Smith carried Hila toward the valley.
“I’m afraid of what we’ll find,” said Brown.
We linked up with another section of tunnels, ones we’d already marked with beacons, and we stepped over four or five bodies of Taliban fighters.
Brown and I spent nearly an hour combing the tunnels. No tracker chips were detected during those moments when I’d slip outside to search for a signal, so we had to assume both men were still underground.
Sighing in disgust, I told Brown we needed to get back and see if we couldn’t get a search team in the tunnels by morning.
“You think they got captured?”
“I don’t know what to think,” I told him. “But we can’t stay up here all night.”
We hiked down from the mountains and toward the village. The firing had all but stopped, and the gunships had already pulled out and were heading toward Kandahar.
As Brown and I reached the defile, we were met by a horrible sight:
Anderson and Harruck were standing in the smoking ruins of the school, shattered by Taliban mortar fire. The once tall walls of the police station, whose roof was about to be constructed, looked like jagged teeth now, with more smoke coiling up into the night sky.
Anderson was crying. Harruck glared and cried, “Thanks a lot for all your help!”
Fifteen minutes later I was getting my gunshot wound treated. All the girls had been taken back to the hospital as well, and they were all staring at me, as if to say thank you. Hila had been rushed into surgery.
I was patting my fresh bandage when Brown came running into the hut and cried, “Captain! Get out here! You’re not going to believe this!”
I rushed away from the nurse and made it outside, where Warris was being helped out of a Hummer. He was ragged and filthy and still reeked. His eyes were bloodshot and he just looked at me vaguely as I rushed up to him.
“Fred, where the hell were you?”
It took a few seconds for him to focus on me. “They found me down in the valley.”
“Where’s Ramirez?”
He swallowed. “I, uh, I don’t know.”
I raised my voice. “What do you mean?”
“I MEAN, I DON’T KNOW! NOW GET OUT OF MY GODDAMNED FACE!” He shoved me aside and headed toward the hospital.
I grabbed him by the shoulder and spun him around. “You’re going to talk right now.”
“I’ll talk, all right. No worries about that!”
“Where’s Ramirez?”
“We got separated. I don’t know what happened. I looked for him, and he was gone. That’s all I know.”
“Where is he?”
He glared at me, then turned and walked away. I started after him, but Brown grabbed my shoulder. “Don’t…”
I talked to one of the doctors, who told me Hila would pull through just fine. They’d removed the bullet. The doc did take me aside and tell me she’d found evidence of rape on all the girls. I explained the situation, and she said, as I already knew, that none of the families would want these girls back, and if we revealed what had happened to them, their fates could take an even sharper turn for the worse.
“We’ll see if we can get them to an orphanage,” I said. “The woman who’s in charge of the school project, Anderson? We’ll see if we can get help from her.”
I still vowed to find Shilmani and tell him I had gotten his daughter out of there. I wanted to tell the man how bravely she’d fought and how she’d literally saved my life. I wasn’t sure if that would change anything, but I wanted him to know.
However, the fan was dialed up to ten, and the camel dung was about to hit it and fly for miles.
I was ordered to Harruck’s office before I even returned to my billet.
When he was finished cursing his head off and sucking down his drink, he looked at me and said, “I hope to God you think this was worth it. At least give me that much. At least let me know that you still believe in what you did, because if you don’t…”
“Zahed needed to die. I’m sorry about the consequences. He’s dead. Maybe things will change here. Maybe not.”
“Well, I’m done here. I’m out. That’s a change. You win. I lose. We did nothing here. Nothing.”
I might’ve stolen two hours of sleep before I dragged myself back up and fought with the guards at the gate, who wouldn’t let me and Brown leave the base.
“I have direct orders from the CO. Your team is confined to the base. You’ll have to take that up with the CO, sir.”
I did. Harruck was sleeping, but the XO spoke to us. “Word came down. There are some boys from Kandahar flying in to talk to you guys.”
“Army Intel?”
He shook his head. “Spooks.”
“Do you realize what you’ve done?” Bronco screamed, and that was the edited version of his question, which in truth had contained curses and combinations of curses I hadn’t heard before.
He and his sidekick had escaped from Sangsar, gotten treated for their gunshot wounds, and linked up with their superiors. The group of four decided they would interrogate the hell out of me all morning. I’d grinned at the crutches both Bronco and Mikey had used to get into the room.
With arms folded over my chest and a bored look on my face, I repeated, “I don’t have to talk to you, and I won’t. So piss off.”
Bronco attempted to describe the length and breadth of their operation, and he leaned forward and told me that I’d ruined years’ worth of work, murdered an unarmed man, and that the agency would see me hang. Blah. Blah. Blah.
I told them all where to go, then stormed out. They couldn’t hold me. They couldn’t do jack. I went back to Harruck and told him I was going to see Shilmani and that if he tried to stop me, I’d have him brought up on charges.
He started laughing and just waved me off. His laughter sounded more unbalanced than cynical.
Brown and I caught up with Shilmani at the shacks on the outskirts of town. He was loading water and would not look at me as we approached.
“Listen to me, please,” I began. “We got Hila. She’s in the hospital. She’s okay.”
He froze at the back of his truck and just stood there a moment, his breathing ragged before he began to cry.
I looked at Brown and turned away. I was choked up myself. I could barely imagine what Shilmani was going through. He had to convince himself that his daughter was dirt now because his culture dictated how he should think. In fact, if we didn’t get the girls to an orphanage and simply call them “war orphans,” they would all be
