battered brass kettle. Outside another, a bony farmer dragged a rake slowly through the earth, as an equally bony cow grazed nearby. Two empty burqas floated high in the air, ghosts on a clothesline.
In the center of the village was an empty dirt field, a town square of sorts. The Strykers were sure to park there. None of the walls between him and the square were high enough to matter. The fluttering burqas were a lucky break, too. Their movement would make gauging the breeze easy. Francesca hardly even needed Alders.
“Look good?”
“That it does.”
Alders crawled up beside him, holding the rifle and his bag of gear. Francesca edged left and traded the binoculars for the Dragunov. “Too easy,” Alders said.
“There’s no such thing.” Francesca slid the Dragunov’s scope over the rifle’s barrel, which was designed with a metal rail that made attaching the scope a cinch. He flipped a latch to lock it in place. Next he reached for a magazine. He’d brought four, all loaded with ten rounds of 203-grain steel-jacketed 7.62-millimeter ammunition. The bullets could smash Level IV armor plates that stopped regular AK rounds.
At five hundred meters, even a perfectly aimed shot from the Dragunov could go wide of its target by six inches. Instead of a head shot, Francesca planned to aim for Young’s chest and fire a three-shot burst. Unlike most sniper rifles, the Dragunov was semiautomatic. Each squeeze of the trigger fired another round. At worst, the first burst would shatter Young’s vest and knock him down. With ten rounds, Francesca would have plenty of chances for a kill shot.
Francesca locked onto the farmer bent over his rake.
28
Wells stopped at the intersection of the valley road and the easternmost of the three tracks that led over the hills. He jumped off and squatted low, looking for bicycle tracks in the dirt. If Francesca and Alders had come this way this morning, their narrow tires should still be visible. But the treads Wells saw were far too wide to belong to bicycles. He pulled out his binoculars and followed the track into the hills. No bicycles, no men walking.
Fifty yards down, three boys played soccer, kicking a ragged ball with the studied indolence of teenagers everywhere. Wells stepped toward them. “Have you been here all morning?” The boys looked at one another. The ball never stopped moving.
“Have the Americans taken your tongues? Answer me.”
The tallest boy grinned at Wells, a confident smile that somehow reminded Wells of his own son. “Yes.”
“Have you seen men riding bicycles this way?”
“One man. My uncle Hamid. He lives down there.” The boy nodded to a low-walled compound about a mile down the road.
Wells hurried back to his motorcycle. He could eliminate this track. Two left. The second intersection was barely ten miles west, but Wells wasn’t sure how long he would need to reach it. Forty miles an hour on the Arghandab road equaled a hundred and twenty on an American highway. Any faster and he would pop a tire.
Wells swung the bike around, headed west. In the last two hours, he’d gotten to know this strip of road: the one-room store that seemed to sell nothing but potatoes and apples, the skinny German shepherd chained to a tree who barked madly when Wells passed. The grape hut that Francesca and Alders were using as a bed-and- breakfast.
Finally, the second ridgeline road. Wells pulled over, looked for bicycle tires.
The road passed a handful of compounds on its way to the ridgeline. The bikes could have belonged to local farmers. Even so, Wells decided to go with his gut, chase the tracks. He turned south. The road was so rutted and rocky that he couldn’t get out of second gear. Francesca and Alders must have had an even tougher time. The slowest chase in history. A 250cc Honda knockoff after two bicycles. Wells smiled, but only for a moment. He didn’t understand why Young hadn’t called him, warned him. He might be too late already. Francesca might be taking aim at this moment—
Wells bent his head to the mud with the desperate hope of a poker player peeking at his last down card, needing an ace. And saw… fresh tracks. He rode on, more confident now, as the road rose in earnest into the hills. Wells wended his way between ruts deep enough to snap his ankle. Wells saw now why the Arghandab Valley was so isolated. Farmers couldn’t use these tracks to ship their produce to Highway 1 and the rest of Zabul. Even a well-built four-wheel-drive SUV would have a tough time with this hill.
Wells took a curve too fast and the front wheel chopped into a rut. The bike tilted precariously left and the back end kicked out. Wells pulled his left foot off the peg and stepped sideways onto the muddy track. His toes jammed into a rock, sending a jolt up his leg. The bike stalled. As he struggled to keep it from going down, his right leg touched the superheated exhaust pipe. He tried to pull away, but the bike moved with him, the pipe searing his gown into his calf. Finally, Wells regained his balance and jerked the bike up. He stood in the track, grunting in pain. A bright red burn the size of a silver dollar rose from his right calf. His left foot throbbed angrily. He wasn’t exactly mortally wounded, but the odds that he’d win a foot chase with Francesca had just plunged.
Wells gritted his teeth and put the motorcycle in gear and rolled on. First gear. No faster. He’d be useless if he broke a leg. Anyway, Francesca and Alders couldn’t be that far ahead. On bikes, they’d be lucky to make five miles an hour.
Minute by minute, turn by turn, he rose up the hill.
TEN MINUTES LATER, he reached the saddle. And saw their bikes, sprawled carelessly a few feet from the road. Eureka. Wells stopped, looked left and right. The bikes lay to the left, east, so Francesca and Alders had probably gone that way. But he didn’t see them, or any obvious position.
He could leave the road, ride up the hill. But they’d hear the engine coming their way long before he found them. He couldn’t ride and shoot at the same time. They’d take him out easily. He could ditch the bike and go up the ridge on foot. But if they were close, and they probably were, they would hear the motorcycle cut out. And wonder why it had stopped instead of passing over the saddle. Or… if the Strykers hadn’t arrived yet… if he had even a few minutes…
Wells rode to the southern edge of the saddle and put the bike in neutral and looked out. The village lay a few hundred yards below. No Strykers, but Wells saw a convoy of blocky vehicles maybe five miles away. They’d be at the village in ten minutes, fifteen at most.
He eased back into gear, rode over the ridge and down the hill. As he left the safety of the ridgeline, he was intensely conscious that Francesca had to be above, watching through his scope. He kept his eyes forward. No reason to look anywhere but the village ahead. No reason to be nervous. He was just a farmer out for a ride.
Then he closed on the village, or it closed on him. The compounds splayed out around the road. He came to a muddy open square and what must have been the only shop in town. Four teenagers stood beside its open doorway. Just what Wells had hoped to see. He pulled up beside them, parking beside a wall that hid him from the ridgeline.
“Nice motorcycle,” the biggest of the four said.
“What’s your name?”
