The Guardian (41 page)

And now he had the Cloak. It would give him great earthly power, he knew. When it became known that he had saved the relic from the Americans, the support he already had would increase. In short
order, much of the country – and particularly the fundamentalist elements – would coalesce around him. He intended to use that power to enforce the will of Mohammed. Perhaps then he
would truly be given the gift of divine inspiration.

The plane was on its approach and, in less than an hour, he would be out of American airspace. Then he would breathe easily again. Until then . . .

He looked across the airstrip at the path that led back toward Ainsworth’s house. Ainsworth and Stillwell would be able to fight off any assault for hours. The chances that anyone would be
able to storm the house and get enough information to come after him and his bodyguard seemed remote. And yet there was always a chance, and he intended to stay vigilant.

He saw the movement on the path before his bodyguard did. At first he thought it was a shadow playing tricks on his eyes, but then a gunshot echoed in the distance, and the window of the little
hut exploded.

‘They are coming!’ he shouted in Farsi. He and his bodyguard took up positions along the bottom edge of the shattered window. He expected that their attackers would have taken cover
in the brush, but it was not the case. Instead, the woman – Phelan’s sister – was coming down the path at full speed. She took loose aim and set off another shot at the little
cabin. This one went well high and wide, though, and Fasil could hear it ricochet off the roof. She wasn’t even keeping low to the ground as she ran, and so she made a generous target. He
strained to see whether there was anyone following her, but the path seemed empty. ‘She may be alone,’ he said to his men. ‘Take her out.’

His man squared himself in the window and carefully sighted down the barrel of his pistol. Time stood still for just a moment. Then he pulled the trigger, giving off a deafening report in the
confined space. A moment later, the woman fell, her momentum broken, her body toppling backwards.

‘I got her!’ Fasil’s man said. There was pride in his voice. Then, more sheepishly, he said, ‘All praise to Allah.’

Fasil looked at him scornfully. ‘Get out there and make sure that she is finished,’ he said. The man looked at him apprehensively. ‘We don’t want her shooting at the
plane if she is only injured. Make sure she is dead and then get our things out on the tarmac and ready to go.’ The man nodded at him and began to move. His bodyguard was a useful creature to
have around, he knew, though he viewed him as devoid of any creativity or independent thought. He wondered whether that was what happened to those who had truly experienced the touch of God.

He followed his man out of the shack, and stood watching the plane. It was at the far end of the runway, and he assumed, given the wind conditions, that it would turn and come back to them so
that it could take off into the wind. With the short runway, they would need every advantage if they were going to get out of the valley and off to Canada.

He still held the wooden box that contained the Cloak. He would let his man handle the guns and other baggage, but he wasn’t going to let anyone else take possession of the Cloak. There
was too much at stake, and even the closest loyalties were corruptible in Afghanistan.

His bodyguard walked slowly toward the shrubs to find the body of the Phelan woman, Fasil called to him, ‘Jabar, hurry! We will be leaving soon!’

The man, who was almost at the edge of the tall grass where the tarmac ended, turned and waved in annoyance. ‘Maybe you wish me to shoot her ghost?’ he called back derisively.

As the words left his mouth, a gunshot rang out. Fasil looked over at him, assuming that he’d finished off the American woman. The bodyguard stood there, at the edge of the tarmac, his gun
pointed out into the vegetation. ‘What happened, Jabar?’ Fasil called. ‘Is the woman’s ghost tougher than you believed?’ The bodyguard began to turn, and Fasil
expected another witless retort. It didn’t come, though. He teetered, took one step, and crashed to the ground.

At that moment, gunshots erupted at the far end of the runway, and the plane began to swerve. Fasil heard glass shattering. ‘Shit!’

Fasil, still clutching the box with the Cloak in one hand and his gun in the other, dove for cover. He remained very still, waiting. He had been in enough battles to know that his survival would
depend primarily on his wits and his patience.

Cianna was lying in the grass twenty feet from the spot where she’d pretended to fall victim to the distant gunshot. Originally she’d planned to take up a new
position and fire off some more long-distance shots, but she quickly realized that Fasil’s man was actually coming to look for her. At that point, she had a better idea. She stayed still and
waited. He was standing there at the end of the tarmac, fewer than ten yards from her position. She’d been afraid to move, assuming that he would see her and get off the first shots. Her
opportunity came when he turned to Fasil. He was no longer looking in her direction, and she had enough time to raise her gun and fire it.

The look on his face was one of pure shock. It hadn’t occurred to him that there was a possibility that he had missed her – that she had faked being hit by his bullet. He scanned the
grass with glassy eyes, but it was clear that he had no ability to see beyond a few feet. Then he collapsed, and she heard the gunplay at the end of the runway. She crawled to her knees, and looked
out at the scene unfolding on the tarmac.

The plane was weaving from side to side. She could see Toney and Akhtar emerging from the brush, running at the plane, firing their weapons. It seemed as though the plane stalled for a moment,
then the engines were gunned, and it lurched forward, sending Toney and Akhtar diving out of the way. The plane bucked and lurched, and turned steeply to the right, headed into the bushes. Even
from her distance, Cianna could see the silhouette of the pilot slumped over the controls. The plane gathered speed as it headed off the tarmac. Once in the brush, it hit a rock and flipped
forward, hanging there, balancing on its nose like a drunk circus animal, before toppling to its side.

Cianna turned her attention to Fasil. He had no one left to help him; no one to protect him. He was lying on the tarmac, taking cover behind a stack of bags outside of the small shack. Morrell
and Toney’s man were at the far end of the runway, moving toward the shack, guns drawn to prevent Fasil from taking cover there.

Cianna got to her feet and started moving across the runway, pointing her gun at the bags. ‘It’s over, Fasil!’ she yelled. ‘Come out from behind there!’

He screamed something in Farsi she didn’t understand, put his gun over the top of the bag and fired wildly. Cianna ducked down. Morrell and Toney’s man fired at the bags from the far
side of the runway, and Fasil returned fire toward them.

‘It’s not worth it!’ Cianna called. ‘You’re not getting out of here!’

Fasil screamed and fired two more shots in Cianna’s direction, forcing her to take cover again. Even as her head was down, she saw him scurry to the other side of the runway. He had the
wooden box in one hand and a gun in the other, and he moved quickly. A trail of bullets followed him, ricocheting off the cement, but it didn’t appear that any of the shots found their
mark.

‘He’s making a break for it!’ Cianna shouted. She was on her feet, running so fast it felt like her lungs were on fire. She had to get to him before he made it up the slope on
the other side of the second peak. If he reached the trees, he might be able to disappear. ‘Come on!’ she screamed to the others, who followed.

She could still see him through the shrubbery, his head bouncing into sight and then ducking down low. It was enough for her to track him, though, and she could tell that she was gaining on him.
She was tempted to call out to him again, but she knew it would do no good, and her chest already felt like it was going to explode.

She paused for a moment and looked up to follow his direction. She could see that he had come to a spot where the path diverged. The main path continued to the west at a gentle slope and wound
around back to the top of a steep rise. A second path went straight up the hill, meeting the longer path higher up the slope. It was a treacherous stretch of steep rock, but it was a shortcut and
less than half as long as the main path.

Cianna turned and shouted to the four men following her. ‘Stay with him!’ she ordered them. Turning, she stuck her gun into the back of her pants, and started moving up the rocky
cliff as quickly as she could. At first, the slope was manageable, and she could take the path upright. As she continued to climb, though, the rock face became steeper and steeper, and she started
using her hands to pull herself along. Several times she thought that she had made a mistake in taking the shorter path, but she pushed on.

It took only a few minutes for her to reach the crest and pull herself over the edge and onto the main path. She was gulping for air, doubled over as she tried to gain her bearings. She looked
up and down the path, but could see no one. She coughed as she cursed herself, wondering whether her eyesight had deceived her. Perhaps the two paths really didn’t meet up, and this was a
different trail. Or perhaps Fasil had found another offshoot and had headed in a different direction. In any event, there wasn’t any sign of her quarry, and there was little she could do
about it.

She stayed bent there for another moment, catching her breath, loosing a few more curses before straightening up to head back down the trail to see whether she could pick up the chase again. As
she did, though, she heard a noise coming from down the path, around a turn blocked by a large boulder. She had no time to react before Fasil was there, standing in front of her, ten feet away,
puffing his way up the mountain. He still had the box in one hand and his gun in the other, but his focus was on the ground as he picked his way carefully along the trail.

She raised her gun and took aim. ‘Stop!’ she shouted.

It startled him, and he tripped over a loose stone as he looked up at her. He fell to his knees and the box toppled out of his hand and landed on its side next to the path. He looked at it, and
then back at her. He started to raise his gun, but she emphasized her aim, moving forward with the barrel directed at his heart. ‘No, no,’ she said.

He lowered the gun, but didn’t drop it. ‘You do not understand the wrath that you will bring down upon yourself!’ he said angrily.

‘Drop your gun.’

‘I am saving my country!’

‘I said, drop it!’

He looked at her in a rage, every muscle in his body tense. With all the fury in his soul, he screamed at her,
‘Qatala armad zaniya!’

She heard the words and found herself back in Kandahar, being pelted with rocks and spit as she stood there, a line in the sand protecting those who were willing to take the risk of standing up
for their most basic rights. She saw the little girl writhing in pain, dying in her mother’s arms as the skin darkened and peeled away from her face. ‘You,’ she said quietly.

He raised his gun, still screaming, but it never got higher than his waist. She fired into his chest, and he toppled back onto the path, dropping his gun. She walked over to him and looked down
into his eyes. His hatred was still there, burning into her. She pointed her gun at his forehead. He nodded at her and closed his eyes. ‘It is as it will always be,’ he said.

She could feel her finger tighten on the trigger. There was no noise, no distraction, nothing to startle her. Only her anger and her hatred and her need to exact revenge for her brother, and for
Nick O’Callaghan, and for Saunders, and for the little girl who had died on a Kandahar street. She took a deep breath, held it, took aim, and tightened her finger again. She wasn’t sure
for how long she held that breath. It could have been thirty seconds, or a minute, or two. But when she released it, it took with it some measure of her hatred, and she lowered her gun.

Fasil opened his eyes and looked at her. There was disappointment in them – no, not just disappointment, but a sense that she had betrayed him. She looked up and saw that Toney and Morrell
and Akhar were all standing there, twenty feet away, watching the scene in silence.

Cianna put her gun on the ground. ‘He’s yours,’ she said.

‘You do nice work,’ Toney said. ‘We have a lot to talk about.’

‘I don’t think so.’

Without another word, she walked past the men on the mountain and headed alone down the slope and away from the death and mayhem that had seemed to follow her most of her life.

Cianna Phelan sat in the passenger seat of the rusted Nissan Sentra in front of the tavern on L Street in South Boston, staring straight ahead. Her fingers picked nervously at
a loose tab of vinyl peeling back from a crack on the armrest. It had been two weeks since the shoot-out in the mountains, and she had spent most of that time on her own. She was only just starting
to feel able to talk to others. ‘Thanks for bringing me here, Milo,’ she said.

‘No problem,’ he said. ‘Do you want me to come in with you?’

It was nice of him to offer. She knew that he did not really want to come into the tavern with her. Confrontations made his stomach churn, she knew, and she marveled once again at his choice of
profession. ‘No thanks,’ she said. ‘I can handle this myself.’

He turned to look at her. ‘You’re going to leave, aren’t you?’

She didn’t look back at him, and she said nothing.

He took a deep breath and blew it out through his fingers. ‘Maybe it’s just as well,’ he said. ‘This line of work is getting to be too dangerous. I need to find something
else. If you leave, it gives me an excuse.’

She finally looked at him. ‘Oh, please, Milo. What else would you do?’

‘I don’t know.’ He shrugged. ‘Maybe I’ll open an Asian-fusion restaurant. If the yuppies keep moving in at the rate they have been, you never know; I could make a
run of it.’