Dangerous Territory: An Alpha Ops novella (8 page)

“He seems to be on the mend. His name is Abul,” Grace said with a smile. Abul played a card and giggled loudly. Grace pulled a face at him, then put her hand up for a high five. He squealed as he slapped her palm.

A little girl, maybe about five, dressed in a pastel-colored skirt and a white overblouse, whispered something to Abul, and he put his arm around her and snuggled her against him.

“That’s Fallam, his younger sister. Atti is his best friend,” Grace said. Josh knelt and held out his hand to shake hers, but she hid her head in her brother’s chest. He laughed and was about to stand up when her hand shot out with a little stuffed toy. “Is that for me?”

Grace translated for her, and the little girl nodded into Abul’s shoulder. Josh stood and tucked the toy into his thigh pocket so that the head and arms stuck out of the top. His commander would make him do a hundred push-ups if he saw him with that in his pocket, but he guessed that was the least of his transgressions. He had broken more rules in the past two days than he had in the past ten years. He thought for a second and pulled a chem light from his pack. He cracked it and gave it to her in return. Her eyes got wider as it gradually lit up. She giggled and waved it around her head like his nephew would a sparkler.

Abul jumped up with the help of a crude-looking walking stick. He was able to move pretty fast, all things considered. Josh crouched down to check his leg, but beyond a little swelling, there was nothing unusual.

The boy stood as straight as he could and waited for Josh to stand up. He wondered what he was doing, but when Abul snapped into a pretty sharp salute, he fought to keep tears from welling up. Josh immediately came to attention and saluted back at him. They held it for a few seconds, and then the boy started to topple over. Josh caught him before he hit the floor and swung him around.

“Thank you, sir,” the little boy said in lightly accented English.

Josh looked at Grace. “He speaks English?”

“Apparently!” She rose and stood next to him. “Want to come out with us, Abul?”

“Yes, sir!” he replied.

Josh laughed and lofted him into his arms. “Why do I get the impression that might be the only thing he can say?”

“SpongeBob SquarePants,” Abul proclaimed.

“Apparently, not the only thing he can say.” Grace laughed and ruffled the boy’s hair.

“Iron Man! Elastigirl!”

“Now, that’s a superhero I can embrace.” Josh flashed a smile at Grace. “Always had a bit of a crush on Elastigirl. Or maybe it was just Holly Hunter.”

“I won’t lie. I kinda did, too!” She grinned back.

Josh laughed out loud, a sound he hadn’t heard from himself in a long time. What a mission. In the middle of a war zone, trading superhero names with an injured nine-year-old? Did rules really matter here? He wasn’t sure anymore. Maybe they just didn’t apply when you were by yourself behind enemy lines. Maybe rules were for breaking then.

His feelings of right and wrong were deserting him. He looked at her and had a vision of Grace and him, holding a child, in the yard of their house. It flashed into his brain in the same way that solutions to complex rescue scenarios did. Like it was right. Like he always knew it was right.

Fucking journalist was messing with his head.

He set Abul carefully down, holding under his arms until he was sure he wasn’t going to fall, and then straightened. “We really need to find a phone or even a shortwave radio,” he said to her.

“I know. I’ve asked, but there is some wrangling to do. They won’t take us straight to the radio if there is one. They will do it in their own time, as if it’s their decision. Also, they know that when you make the call, your people will come for you, and they don’t know what that means for them. Will the Taliban attack them because they saw troops here? Will your people assume they are the enemy? There are a lot of things that they will need to talk about between themselves first.”

“I hadn’t thought about it like that, to be honest. We can give them another few hours until the sandstorm passes the base”—he pointed southwest to the yellow sky—“because the satellite phones won’t work there in the storm anyway.”

Abul ran, or limped off, distracted by a puppy that was nosing at the tufts of grass by one of the huts. They both paused and watched as he hobbled to it and stroked its short fur. He shouted to his sister, who after a pause, presumably to ask permission, barreled out of the house. She sat next to them and giggled as it rolled over to have its belly scratched. It was such a normal scene.

“I’m going to go and check my stuff,” he said. He didn’t need to. But it seemed like a safe thing to do to distract him from his errant thoughts about… happiness and stuff.

“O-kay?” Grace said with an amused look on her face. “If you’re going to ‘check your stuff,’ I’m going to interview the elder.”

As soon as she said the word “interview,” she knew she’d made a mistake. His face went blank and he bit out, “Fine,” before turning and marching away. It seemed as if there was no way he was ever going to come to terms with what she did for a living. It didn’t matter that she wasn’t trying to sensationalize the war. Pulitzer? She couldn’t exactly work that into casual conversation without sounding like a douche.

So she guessed she was going to have to live with the fact that he hated her. Or at least her profession. And in all honesty, she didn’t think that he would ever be able to separate the two. Good thing she wasn’t attached to him.

Right.

The village elder had incredibly interesting stories to tell about the war and the impact on his village. About the only medical facility that hadn’t been destroyed by the war that was more than twenty miles away. About trying to keep the so-prevalent drug business away from the village. He’d lost some men to the industry because there was so much money to be made. Along with the same amount of danger. He saw it as his job to keep the village families working the flour mill. The money wasn’t so good, but as long as they didn’t get involved with anything that straddled the line of legality, the Taliban and the warlords left them alone and the village stayed safe.

No wonder he never smiled. The stress of being responsible for a whole village in the face of a war must be terrible.

She took a little time chatting with the women, getting their perspective on village life and how they kept their families together. It was going to make a great article. This was the first proper interview she’d done where she wasn’t rushed away after ten minutes or so to go to another village or to go back to base. She wanted to write a story that emphasized the overwhelming similarities between a family here and a family in the United States. And it felt like she could write the story now. Words, sentences, and quotes ran through her mind as she struggled to keep up and write them in her tiny waterproof notebook.

Suddenly, they heard a sharp shout from Abul. Something was wrong. The adults ran to the door, and Grace followed, heart in her mouth, worried that he had fallen and rebroken his leg. As she cleared the door, she saw that the reality was much worse.

About a hundred yards away, a large man with an AK-47 had Fallam, his hand over the little girl’s mouth so she couldn’t scream.

He backed away from them, waving his weapon.

Oh my God. No. No
. She couldn’t just watch this beautiful girl be taken. She’d heard that this happened sometimes. Children taken from their homes, little boys to be brainwashed as fighters and girls as suicide bombers, or worse.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw movement from where she’d spent the night.

Josh.

She tried not to look at him even though she was sure the man was too far away to notice. Josh moved slowly, in time with the abductor’s movements.

Clever. He probably wouldn’t notice…

And then he did. He spun his gun toward Josh, with Fallam acting as his shield. Grace didn’t even think.

“No!” she yelled as she took off toward him at a run.

She saw Josh raise his arm to try to halt her, but he must have realized that she had created an opening for him. The man spun the gun toward Grace, and Josh took off. But everything moved in slow motion.

Josh reached the man and grabbed the gun as it started spitting bullets. Grace crouched and ran to the left to try to avoid the gunfire. She could barely feel her legs, she was so scared, but she couldn’t take her eyes off Josh. He yanked the gun up, and at the same time kicked with the flat of his foot against the abductor’s knee.

The man screamed in pain but didn’t fall and didn’t let go of Fallam.

Josh moved with scary precision. He punched him in the throat, twisted the gun out of his hand, and used the weapon to swipe the man’s legs from under him. Josh threw the gun behind him, out of reach, snatched the little girl from his grasp, and set her down.

The man tried to get up, but Josh was ready for him. He kicked his knee again, eliciting a howl of pain, and then punched him again and again in the face until blood spurted, dribbled, and then gushed on the dusty ground. Grace stopped running and gently put a hand on Josh’s shoulder.

He spun around, anger and fists poised to explode, but the second he recognized her, he dropped his head in relief and stopped fighting.

The villagers descended on them. The women carried the children off, and one of the men threw the AK-47 in through the door that Josh had come out of just a few moments earlier.

Josh just squatted there, keeping the prostrate abductor down.

“See how many people you’ve saved? Me, Fallam, Abul, and you saved their parents the worst kind of grief. You are a hero,” Grace whispered to him, crouching next to him.

One of the village men brought some cable ties. Josh shoved the man over and tied his hands behind his back. Then he stood and looked at his own bloody hands. His fists were swollen but not cut.

“Come,” Grace said in a low voice. She took both his hands in hers and led him to their hut. A woman hustled by them with a bowl of hot water and some strips of material. She dashed out as they slowly made their way into the room.

As her eyes adjusted to the dark, Grace held his hands in the warm water and gently stroked them clean. Every caress was a silent declaration of tenderness and affection. He just didn’t know it, and there was no way on God’s earth she would tell him. She had to let him go—it was too painful to allow herself more than a few seconds of feeling before shutting him out of her mind and heart.

*     *     *

He’d been so relieved to see Grace standing there, he’d almost laughed. Every vibrant part of his soul left his body when he thought that she’d been shot, and her concerned face peering at him brought it soaring back into him.

By some miracle, she must have avoided the stray bullets. Feeling her hands against his brought him back to life. Each stroke of her delicate hands felt like magic to him. Warmth and strength coursing through his veins, hardening him all over. In the dark, he closed his eyes and breathed her presence in. If they ever got back…

His brain flashed to the almost abductor. They had tied his hands together with cable ties. Cable ties.
Wait a moment.

“They have cable ties. That must mean…”

“Yes. I know. That’s what I thought. I think you’ve earned a radio, don’t you?”

In the anonymous darkness, he allowed himself one last moment of weakness. Taking her wet hands in his, he pressed them firmly against his heart.
You’re in there
, he thought silently, urging her to understand from the unspoken feel of his heart beating.

She found his mouth with hers, and they both knew it was good-bye. He gently kissed her, savoring her lips, the feel of her hands pressed against his chest. Intoxicated by her and by the disorienting darkness, he allowed himself a moment of pure emotion. He felt it trickle through him like raindrops against a pane of glass.

She pulled away. “You could have been killed. You could have been
killed
.” She shook his shoulders. He hadn’t stopped to consider that possibility. He would never stop to consider that possibility. She needed to know him, and the best way he knew to do that was to speak the words he knew as well as his own name.

“It is my duty as a pararescueman to save lives and to aid the injured. I will be prepared at all times to perform my assigned duties quickly and efficiently, placing these duties before personal desires and comforts. These things I do, that others may live.”

Tears fell from her eyes as she listened. When he finished, she pressed her lips to his again. It felt like a good-bye kiss. He wanted to say to her:
This, this is why I don’t get involved. I’m never thinking about my own life, and if I start worrying about someone back home, I won’t be able to do my job as well.
Maybe she understood anyway.

A knock at the door interrupted them. He felt rather than saw her fade into the shadows of the round room. Her hands slipped effortlessly from his, and as her body lost contact with his, a coldness settled where the warmth of emotion had just resided.

He shook his head at himself and opened the door. The village elder nodded in the direction of another building and beckoned Josh to follow him. They crossed the dusty terrain together. Josh looked back, but she hadn’t followed him. The elder opened the door to a small hut, and Josh’s face must have dropped in amazement. He looked at the older man, who smiled for the first time since they arrived.

The room was filled, floor to roof, with electronics. There were two televisions. One was on and being watched avidly by Abul, Atti, and Fallam. When their father said something to them to get their attention, their heads swung around, and when they saw Josh, Abul got up as fast as his leg allowed him and rushed to his side, hugging his leg. Josh hoisted him to his hip and hugged him back.

“Thank you, sir. Thank you, sir,” he babbled.

Abul’s father said something sternly to him, and he wriggled to get down. Josh put him back on terra firma and surveyed the electronics. Abul pointed at the television and said, “SpongeBob,” with a very cute, heavy accent. Then he pointed at a large aluminum case that housed several old-style radios. “Shotwave radio.” He carried on, pointing around the room. “Veedeo player. Radio Liberty.”

Josh grinned at the name of the American radio station that broadcast in English wherever troops were.

“DVR, Satelline telephone…”

“Satellite,” the elder corrected him.

Josh realized that he’d have to call his commander in Florida in order to get patched back through to the Afghan base, and God only knew how long that would take. None of the bases in Afghanistan had local telephone numbers; they were all on a US military network. He pointed at the satellite phone and the elder nodded. He took a breath and picked up the receiver.

*     *     *

Within five minutes of his call, Josh knew his team would be airborne. Within twenty or so minutes, a helo would be there to pick them up. The sandstorm had thankfully blown past the base at the same velocity as it did the village.

He ran back to their room to tell Grace the good news. She was packing her bag and looked up as he came in. “My team is coming for us.”

“That’s wonderful news,” she said. But her expression contradicted her words. She sniffed and worked on getting her backpack closed.

He took the bag from her hands and snapped the clasp shut. She reached for the bag, but he held it in his hands. “We need to talk.”

“It’s okay,” Grace replied. “I’ve already had the talk in my head.”

Oh shit. This wasn’t going to be good.

“This was just a blip,” she continued. “It was something that happened in the moment. We don’t have to speak about it again. Really. It’s much better this way. Neither of us has to worry about repercussions or people talking about us. You can continue being a hero”—she smiled—“and you
are
a hero. And I will continue looking for stories, and we can just stay in each other’s memories.”

“I was just going to say that we can’t talk about this or show any telltale signs. If anyone suspected any… impropriety, you’d never be allowed to embed again, which, of course, to me would be a win, but it would also get me fired. And you know Bagram is a hotbed of gossip. Just being seen together would have tongues wagging. I’d like to give you my e-mail—”

“No,” she interrupted. “I mean, yes, I would take it, and I’d probably e-mail you. But then you’d be on a mission, and you wouldn’t write back. Or maybe you would write back eventually, and we’d start chatting on e-mail, and you’d see an article I wrote that you didn’t like, or I’d embed somewhere with no communications… What I’m trying to say is that it’s a bad idea. For a whole bunch of reasons. So no e-mails.”

She was right. Dead, spot-on right. There were too many obstacles between them. Obstacles that didn’t mean anything when they were stranded away from safety, but in the real world, they were insurmountable. Somehow that knowledge didn’t stop the cold feeling creeping through him. He had to let her go. He had zero choice.

“So as soon as we leave this hut, it’s as if nothing happened here?” He gestured to the space between them. Why did this suddenly feel wrong? Did she really believe the things she said?

As if reading his mind, she nodded, paused for a second that he was sure showed a tear on her cheek, and then threw herself against him. He wrapped his arms around her slight body and held her as tight as he could.

She raised her face to his, and he kissed her with all the urgency of the moment. Her tongue forced itself against his, lighting a fire inside him. A fire he knew they didn’t have time to slake. He took her kiss and made it his own, molding himself against her, pushing her back against the center column of the hut. Feeling her, tasting her, burning her into his memory.

Eventually, she turned her head away, eyes cast down. He stepped back immediately. He wanted to ask her what was wrong, but it was a stupid question.

She moved away from him, and the air chilled where her body had been. He watched as she picked up her bag and left the hut. She paused in the doorway, turned back, and said, “Good-bye,” so softly, he could barely hear it. The door shut quietly as she left. It should have slammed loudly and firmly behind her. Something to clearly define the line between being with her and being without her.

She was right. Neither of their lives had room for a relationship or even an exchange of e-mails. It would be too distracting.

He slipped his own pack onto his shoulder, and before he left he allowed himself one last look around, remembering for a second their naked bodies on the bed. He shook it off and made his way north of the grouped huts, enlisting help as he went to remove the two makeshift soccer posts on the place he’d picked as an LZ. The area was clear of mines. He knew that the local Afghans had pretty much either rounded up all the mines after the Russians left in the eighties, or marked the minefields with white stones.