The Mullah's Storm (14 page)

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Authors: Tom Young

BOOK: The Mullah's Storm
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So he’s leading from the front, thought Parson. A good sign, perhaps, but Parson still wasn’t sure how much trust to place in Najib and the other Afghan troops.
Several sets of horse tracks led away into the fog. When Parson could no longer see the compound, the group came upon a wounded horse writhing in the snow. The animal raised its head, looked at the team through widened, black eyes. Blood from gunshot wounds slicked its flanks.
“What a shame we had to do that,” Najib said. “This beast has done no wrong.”
“I got it,” Cantrell said.
He pointed his rifle at the horse’s head, the muzzle just inches from the brown fur. When he pressed the trigger, the shot reverberated through the mountains. The echo seemed to loop back on itself until the bang extended into a roar that finally died away. The horse went limp.
“The animal was not the only thing bleeding,” Najib said. He pointed to a blood trail that extended beyond the horse. It took Parson a moment to see it. The droplets had sunk into the powdery snow, left tiny holes tinged with pink. Only where the blood had fallen into a bootprint did Parson see a burgundy smear. To his hunter’s eye, that meant a slow dripping of dark venous blood, not bright red arterial spurts. Somebody was hurt, but maybe not badly.
Najib took out a topographical map and studied it with Cantrell and the sergeant major. It didn’t look much like an aeronautical chart, but Parson knew enough to realize the tightly clustered contour lines meant steep terrain.
“What’s the plan?” Parson asked.
“I know this area,” Najib said. “There are only one or two places they can go. When they stop, we will strike them again.”
Najib took a compass bearing and spoke to his men in Pashto. The team followed Najib into the fog and light snow, and just as Parson had predicted from the map, the walk turned into a climb. Parson braced himself against gray boulders topped with crests of snow and ice. The scree crumbled beneath his feet, sent pebbles bouncing downhill until they vanished into drifts. Rotten ground.
He wished he had an ice ax, some line, and a few carabiners. And he felt naked without a weapon and a flak vest. Oh well, he thought. People in hell want ice water. Or maybe people in hell want an ice ax and some line. And some night-vision goggles and a rifle. I want to get Gold back. God, I don’t want to lose somebody else.
As they gained elevation, the fog began to clear, swept away by a breeze speckled with large flakes. Parson saw to his disappointment that the cloud ceiling remained at the treetops. He’d hoped the weather would open up enough for another assault force to go after Gold in a helicopter. A Black Hawk could sure as hell outrun their damned horses. He trudged on under a gunmetal sky.
The team entered a stand of creaking timber, evergreens with spines of snow along their trunks. Parson watched Najib approach the gnarled root mass of a toppled tree, shotgun ready, safety off. If I were lying in wait, Parson thought, that’s where I’d be. But no threat emerged, and Najib checked his compass, moved on.
Near the end of the day, they stopped among thicker woods beneath the ridgetop. Some men dropped their packs and began to set up four-man cold-weather tents. Parson watched as they tied off lines and spread the white rainflies. At least we won’t freeze our asses off, he thought. Several of the troops set up a perimeter and scanned the terrain through binoculars and rifle scopes.
Inside a tent, Cantrell offered an MRE to Parson. Parson ate applesauce from the MRE pouch, scooping with a brown plastic spoon. He did not feel like eating and he did not taste the food. Najib entered the tent, and Parson guessed the two officers wanted to ask him more questions, but they waited while he ate. He noticed again the strip of duct tape on Cantrell’s uniform. It struck Parson as a matter-of-fact, by-the-book statement: This is my blood type. If I’m bleeding out, you know what to do. Parson had seen other American troops wearing similar markers.
Najib wore no such tape. It was as if he believed in fate or predestination: I’ll get seriously wounded or I won’t, and it’s not as if there’s a blood bank behind the next tree.
Orders and regs versus the natural order. Both had their place, but command and control seemed a long way off right now, and living and dying so very close.
The pain in Parson’s wrist was still just a dull ache thanks to the morphine, but the narcotic caused itching on his nose and the backs of his hands. He pulled off his gloves and scratched as the soldiers questioned him.
“He said his name was Marwan,” Parson said.
Najib and Cantrell looked at each other.
“Spoke English better than I do,” Parson continued. “Expensive watch. Expensive education, too, I bet.”
“The devil is a gentleman,” Cantrell said.
“I’ve never seen an Afghan like him,” Parson said.
“He is not Afghan,” Najib said.
“He’s not?” Parson asked.
“Marwan was a lieutenant colonel in the Pakistani army and an officer in their Inter-Services Intelligence agency, the ISI,” Najib explained. “Many Indian commanders have fallen to his rifle. That you met him and lived makes you fortunate, indeed.”
“We have orders to capture or kill him if we get a chance,” Cantrell said. “With that damned rifle of his, we’ll probably have to shoot him to get near him.”
“Anyway, this Marwan knows way too damn much,” Parson said. “He knew something about my training. He seemed to know what bases we’re using.”
“He would be quite familiar with coalition forces,” Najib said. “He attended Sandhurst on an exchange program. He trained with the British SAS.” Najib sounded almost envious of Marwan’s schooling.
“Oh, hell,” Parson said. He’d always thought of terrorists as rabid dogs. Mindless malevolence. But a thinking enemy, especially one with that much on the ball, meant a higher order of foe altogether. Parson felt as if the rules of the game had changed around him and everyone playing it knew more than he did.
“Did he say anything else?” Najib asked.
“In the video, he said he’d kill us if the U.S. didn’t release all the prisoners. He also said a storm is coming. Something about 9/11.”
“Let us look at that video,” Najib said. He picked up the camcorder Cantrell had taken from the dead insurgent. Cantrell handed him the memory cards, and Najib placed one in the camera and extended the rectangular screen. Najib pressed function buttons until he figured out the device. Finally, he said, “This is the statement with Major Parson and Sergeant Gold.” He held up the camera for Cantrell to see. Parson shuddered as he listened to Marwan’s crisp English accent.
In the tiny screen, he saw himself sitting beside Gold. She looked more frightened than he remembered. And she’s still with them, he thought. Sweat trickled down his torso. He thought he would be sick, but he kept his stomach under control.
Najib scrolled until he found another file on the camcorder. Parson looked over Najib’s shoulder. He saw Nunez at the caravansary, seated and bound. Marwan and his men stood behind him, one terrorist holding a machete.
“I don’t need to see this,” Parson said, turning away.
“Sorry, sir,” Cantrell said. “No need for you to.”
Parson looked outside, still fighting nausea. He heard Marwan chattering in Arabic.
“So this one is for a different audience,” Najib said.
“Would have been,” Cantrell said.
“My Arabic is not good,” Najib said. “Captain Cantrell?”
“Let me get my pad,” Cantrell said. He pulled a pen from the front of his body armor and retrieved paper from a leg pocket.
Parson heard Marwan’s voice rise, and then he heard all the others begin to mumble,
“Allah-hu akbar
.
”
“Turn that shit off,” Cantrell said. “All right, play it back. Please.”
Cantrell took the camera and played the statement again, pausing the machine every few seconds and taking notes. “Pretty damned weird,” he said.
“What does it say?” Parson asked.
“The mighty hand of Allah has drawn the curtain,” Cantrell said, frowning at his pad. “Only Allah may see the work of the faithful. Seasons turn as Allah wills, and the lions of jihad stir from their dens. The martyrs await their orders.”
“I am sure such abstract thoughts mean something specific to someone,” Najib said.
“What did that other video say?” Cantrell asked. “Something about a blizzard never seen before in America?”
“Yes,” Najib said.
Cantrell looked out through the tent flap. He pulled off his gloves with his teeth. Balled up the gloves in one fist. His fingers curled around his rifle barrel. Knuckles white. Scar along the back of his hand like a knife slash, with dots of needle scars alongside it, as if the wound had been sutured in the field and in a hurry. “Marwan is talking about a Pakistani nuclear bomb,” Cantrell said.
Najib nodded.
“Oh, God,” Parson said. “But the Pakistani government—”
“Is not even in control of itself,” Najib said. “The ISI almost openly backs fundamentalists.”
Parson had never heard of the ISI’s divided loyalties. His own intel briefings had focused on the needs of fliers: threat areas, recent antiaircraft missile launches, brevity codes. But he’d read enough about Afghanistan to know the fighting usually stops in winter. The passes freeze over and everybody sits around reloading.
But the bad guys sure as hell weren’t sitting around now. And they had recovered their mullah in a way that might very well have killed the old man in the shootdown. So they’d rather have him dead than questioned. Parson had no idea what to think. He wondered what Gold would say. Parson stared through the trees, watched snow fall like ash.
CHAPTER NINE
 
P
arson lay awake in the tent. Najib and Cantrell seemed to sleep soundly, but Parson could not. He listened to the whisper of the wind and the breathing of his tentmates.
He wondered about Sergeant Gold. Was she in pain? Could she manage to escape? Was she even alive now? Maybe they shot her on the run. And maybe that was the best thing to hope for, given the other possibilities.
Parson dozed a short time, woke up alone. Still dark. Instinctively he felt for his sidearm and then remembered he no longer had one. He heard Cantrell on the satphone outside.
“Yes, sir, we’ll proceed as briefed,” Cantrell whispered. “Sir? You there, sir? Damn it.”
Parson opened the tent flap. He pulled the zipper tab with his right hand and the pain made him grit his teeth.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“Call dropped out,” Cantrell said. “Battery’s about gone.”
“Spare battery?” Parson asked.
“That’s what I’m using,” Cantrell said.
“What you got for radios?”
“Just MBITRs,” Cantrell said.
Cantrell pronounced the acronym “embitters.” Parson had seen those sets before. Multiband Intrateam Radios. Too short-range to call the Air Operations Center at Bagram.
“We’re also low on ammo and food,” Cantrell said. “What’s the old saying? ‘When you’re running out of everything but the enemy, you’re in combat.’”
“What kind of resupply do you guys have set up?” Parson asked.
“There are planes on standby at Kandahar,” Cantrell said, “but they’re grounded now. Task Force is working on getting a drop from somewhere else.”
“Maybe I can help with that,” Parson said. Finally, something in his field of expertise. Perhaps he could coordinate a precision drop with a steerable chute guided by GPS. The airplane could be high and miles from the drop zone when it released the load.
“If you can talk to somebody and speed things up, that would be great,” Cantrell said. “Get what we need to shoot, move, and communicate.”
“If everything in Afghanistan is socked in,” Parson said, “the plane would have to come from Manas or Al Udeid. Unless it’s a model that can refuel in the air, it would have to land someplace like Jacobabad.”
“Let’s go for it,” Cantrell said. “Let this phone battery rest a little. Then you can call your AOC. You won’t have long to talk before the battery dies. The worst they can say is no.” Cantrell removed the battery and placed it under his body armor, inside his shirt.
The chance of doing something useful made Parson feel stronger. He was a gear in a machine, a cog snapped back into place and turning. Maybe if he helped these guys, he was helping Gold. My whole crew is dead now, he thought. She’s all that’s left. Keep your shit together and help her. What can I do while I wait for that battery? he asked himself. Find a drop zone.
The eastern sky began to turn gray, backdropping the trees like a black-and-white photo slowly developing. Parson knew he didn’t want to put the airdrop load here. If it floated down too far back in the direction they’d just come from, it would tumble down the hill. They might find the equipment damaged, assuming they could recover it at all. If it landed on target it would come through the trees. The pallet would probably weigh enough to break branches and reach the ground even if the chute fouled in the pines, but you never knew. Parson looked up at the dark limbs above him clattering in the breeze like dry bones. It would be a pain in the ass to climb one of those trees to cut parachute risers.

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