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Authors: Tom Young

The Mullah's Storm (17 page)

BOOK: The Mullah's Storm
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CHAPTER ELEVEN
 
T
he team watched the village for the better part of an hour. Nothing changed except that the smoke grew fainter until Parson could no longer distinguish it from the snow and mist, the fire having consumed whatever had fed it. He wondered if he’d find Gold, or what was left of Gold, in one of those dwellings.
Najib and Cantrell split the team into squads. They began approaching the village from four directions. Parson followed Najib’s squad as they doubled back down the slope for concealment. Then they crossed the ridgetop south of the village and stopped to watch again.
Nothing new from this angle. Najib walked along wearing the headset from his MBITR, with its tiny microphone suspended in front of his lips. Parson saw him whisper, “Negative.”
Snow continued to fall on snow. The flakes fell diagonally in such a way that Parson lost his sense of horizon. The effect left him a little dizzy, as if his internal gyros had failed. He stumbled, went down on one knee.
“Are you all right?” Najib whispered.
Parson nodded. Najib offered a hand and helped pull him back to his feet. Scabs of packed snow stuck to the leg of his flight suit, then fell off.
As the team converged on the village, Parson saw nothing of the other three squads. Najib paused and told him, “Wait here.” Parson lay prone in the snow and scanned through his rifle scope.
Najib’s squad crept forward, and Parson finally saw two of the other elements take positions on either side of the mud-brick homes. Overwatch and security, Parson guessed, while the remaining squads entered the village. He thumbed his safety to the FIRE position, trained his scope on a door here, an alleyway there.
He saw Najib kneel under a small, wood-frame window, pull the pin on a grenade. Najib did not throw it, just seemed to listen. A soldier kicked in a door and tore in, pointing his rifle. Two other men right behind him, barrels aimed at opposite corners.
Parson waited for the sputter of gunfire. It never came. The team kicked in more doors, rushed more rooms. Not one shot. Najib put the pin back in the grenade.
Cantrell appeared from behind a building, conferred with Najib, pointed. He pulled out a digital camera and took photos of something on the ground. Parson wondered what they could have found of intel value. His next thought made him grip the rifle so hard that it hurt his wrist. Was that Gold?
Najib motioned for him to move up. Parson rose from the snow and headed into the village at a jog, holding his weapon across his chest. The way the soldiers were standing, Parson knew that whatever had happened here was over. He trotted up to the troops, breathing hard.
At Cantrell’s feet lay four bodies nearly covered by snow. Najib kneeled and brushed the powder away from their faces. All Afghans. Eyes open. Blood drying and freezing. With a touch of his fingers, Najib closed each set of eyes.
“The Prophet said when the soul departs, the eyesight follows,” Najib said. He leaned on his shotgun, its stock to the ground. “May God curse the blasphemers who did this.” A shotgun shell dropped from his bandolier, and he rolled the shell in his fingers.
“Did you know them?” Parson asked.
“Distant relations.”
“There’s more,” Cantrell said.
Six bodies lay in a row outside one dwelling. They included a teenage girl. Other bodies in groups. Parson counted nineteen. Two dead men found alone at separate spots. Maybe those guys had gone down fighting, but the others had been executed. A horse, dead of multiple wounds spaced evenly across its body, apparently from a burst on full auto. No sign of an American woman.
“Looks like they killed the whole fucking village,” Cantrell said.
“What the hell for?” Parson asked. Cantrell shook his head.
Parson caught an odor of smoke and maybe kerosene. He discovered what looked like a muddy, black slag pile, the remains of a bonfire. In the ashes he found a charred blanket, blackened and wet like a discarded pelt. An unburned corner of a cardboard box. Plastic vials misshapen by heat or burned away to nothing but a fire-stained cap. A foil pouch with browned lettering, still readable: “Bacitracin Zinc Ointment EXP DEC11.” An Army-issue parka, eaten by flames and now sodden. Gray stains downwind where ash had mingled with snow.
He nudged the mess with his boot, felt something solid. Parson scraped soggy ash away from the hard thing and recognized it as a steel pallet. Stenciling on the edge: USAF PROPERTY.
Relief supplies. Parson had dropped several loads of them himself. Food, clothing, and medicine to help remote villages get through a winter of war. Those motherfuckers had torched it all.
“What do you make of this?” asked Parson.
“The Taliban forbids outside help,” Najib said. “I have seen them destroy supplies before. But it would take something more for them to murder the entire town.”
Cantrell took his pistol in one hand and a SureFire light in the other. “Search everything,” he called. “Watch for booby traps.”
The men entered the houses one by one. Parson heard thumps and crashes, but nothing to cause alarm. He checked out the tracks and hoofprints on the ground, wondering what story he could infer. It was mainly a jumble, snow churned and stomped into frozen ground, or mixed with mud and blood near the fire in a slurry that was starting to refreeze.
Cantrell emerged from a narrow cellar. “Captain Najib,” he called. “I think you better see this.”
Parson followed Najib down the steps. Cantrell trained his light into a corner. The beam revealed a boy about twelve years old, trembling, mouth open. Parson thought the child looked like a trapped animal, unable to fight or flee, waiting to be finished off.
“I found him under a tarp,” Cantrell said.
“Meh wirigah,”
Najib said. He repeated the phrase, offered his hand. The boy took it and followed Najib up the stairs. The child blinked and stared at the soldiers.
“Check him out,” Cantrell called to his medic. “Open an MRE and see if he’ll eat anything.”
One of the soldiers produced a green blanket and draped it over the child’s shoulders. Black lettering across one of the blanket’s folds read: “U.S.” The men steered the boy through a doorway, out of sight from the carnage outside. The medic shined a light into his eyes, prodded his limbs and abdomen.
“Ask him if this hurts,” the medic said. Najib translated and the boy shook his head, though tears rolled down his cheeks.
“Tsok?”
Najib asked.
“Kelah?”
The boy began speaking quickly, stopped and cried, spoke quickly again.
A soldier sliced open a pouch of carrot cake. The boy took one bite and swallowed, then held the pouch and cried. Crumbs on his tongue and his face. Najib spoke what sounded like soothing words, but Parson wondered what balm words could offer now.
“He says Taliban came with an English woman soldier,” Najib said. “The village elders did not want them. You see the result.”
“Ask him if the woman was hurt,” Parson said.
“He says she was alive when they took her away. He says some of the Taliban left with her.”
“You mean they split up?” Cantrell asked.
Najib questioned the boy again.
“He says there was a holy man on a horse, and most of the men left with him.”
“What about Marwan?” Parson asked.
“I am quite sure Marwan would remain with the mullah,” Najib said.
“Why would they separate Sergeant Gold?”
“Perhaps to move faster,” Najib said. “To make our job harder. Why matters little. They did it.”
“At least they haven’t killed her yet,” Cantrell said. “Maybe they want her for propaganda or ransom. Or worse.”
Parson stepped outside, started to slam the door. He caught himself. Don’t scare the boy, fool. He’s probably fucked up for life as it is. Parson held on to the top of the door, ran his other hand along his rifle sling. Seethed.
He walked out into the snow, examined the ground again. The torn-up snow through the village told him nothing. But beyond the fire he saw several sets of boot marks and one set of hoofprints leading off into the distance. That he saw the tracks at all meant they’d been made after the squall blew through. But lighter snow had begun to fill them so that they looked like puncture wounds starting to heal. He found fresh tracks where Cantrell’s squad had come in. Then another set going out, slightly obscured by new snow. Three, no four. Four people. No horse. One line of smaller tracks. Good. Whatever they’d done to her, she could still walk.
Parson showed the tracks to Cantrell. “Trail’s getting fainter by the minute,” Parson said. “If we get to her, maybe another team can track down the rest when the weather clears.”
Cantrell called to his comm sergeant, “Set up the Shadowfire. I need to talk to Task Force.”
The sergeant took off his pack. He unloaded a black metal frame and extended its legs and four antenna panels so that it resembled a giant spider. Connected a coaxial cable.
If they’re using all this secret squirrel comm gear, Parson figured, they must be serious about what they think Marwan is up to.
Cantrell lifted a handset. “Bayonet,” he called, “Razor One-Six.” After a pause, he said, “Sir, we got a decision to make.” Cantrell described the massacre, the boy’s account, the two trails in the snow. “I understand, sir.”
Parson studied Cantrell’s face for hints. Cantrell nodded as he listened, glanced at Parson, looked out into the snowfall.
“We will, sir,” Cantrell said. He gripped the handset’s cord, closed his eyes as if hit with a migraine. “I’m sure it’s a hard call. We’ll keep you informed. Razor One-Six out.”
“Well?” Parson asked.
“They have crews on alert at Bagram to get Sergeant Gold as soon as the storm ends,” Cantrell said. “But the Task Force commander wants us to stay on Marwan and your detainee.”
“When the storm ends?” Parson said. “That could be days.”
“I don’t like it either, sir. But if those guys do what we think they’re trying to do, we could lose a lot of civilians.”
“So you’re saying Gold is expendable.”
Cantrell sighed, looked past Parson. “I wasn’t going to say it, sir, but that’s the word the colonel used.”
So they were just going to give her up. Parson had hoped it wouldn’t come to this, but part of him was not surprised, given the stakes. In his military courses, he had learned about a set of regulations rarely used, or even read. In the clinical language of the Pentagon, they established a category of missions for which recovery of personnel is not a consideration. Well, he’d still consider it.
“Call ’em back,” Parson said. “I want to talk to that colonel.”
“There’s no point in that, Major,” Cantrell said.
Najib came outside. Cantrell told him about the Task Force’s instructions. Najib placed his hand on Parson’s shoulder.
“You have done everything you could,” Najib said. “You are a good soldier.”
“So is she.”
“We have all lost someone,” Najib said. “We will lose more before this is over.”
Yeah, thought Parson. Not if I can help it. He kneeled by Gold’s tracks, eyed where they vanished into the teeming snow. “I’m going after Sergeant Gold,” he said.
“You’re nuts,” Cantrell said. “And we have our orders.”
“
You
have orders,” Parson said. “You guys are a unit with a mission. I’m just a downed airman. I can do whatever the hell I want.”
“If you don’t stay with us,” Cantrell said, “you will die. Period.”
“I understand,” Najib said. “You love your comrades more than you hate your enemies.”
“I don’t know about that,” Parson said.
“Don’t encourage him,” Cantrell said.
“I do not encourage,” Najib said. “I merely understand. Too many of my own friends are dead.”
That’s why you understand, thought Parson. Good. You get it.
Parson strode into one of the houses, swung off his pack, and dropped it on a table. He dug through the pack, taking inventory. Najib and Cantrell joined him inside.
“Can you give me one or two MREs?” he asked.
Najib pulled a meal pouch from his own pack, laid it in front of Parson. Cantrell shook his head.
“I got more double-A batteries than I need,” Parson said. “Take some of these.” Clunked them onto the table.
“Your rifle needs camouflage,” Najib said. He found a roll of white tape in one of his pockets. Picked up Parson’s M-40 and began spiraling the tape around the barrel, forend, and stock. When he finished, the tape did not cover the weapon entirely, but it broke up the outline so thoroughly that the rifle seemed to disappear against Najib’s snow camo anorak.
“Oh, fuck it,” Cantrell said. “Listen to me. I can’t make you into an infantryman right now. Even if I could, this would still be insane. But remember you got nothing but stealth. Everything runs to your disadvantage except that.” Cantrell pointed at Parson, ignoring rank now, lecturing a trainee. “If you do make contact, do not get in a hurry. Take your time. Your only hope is a far ambush. At least you got the weapon for that.”
BOOK: The Mullah's Storm
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