Veiled Freedom (39 page)

And who had not, as they'd hoped, so easily given up.

As he'd seen above the wall, the other side held an orchard, and Jamil stepped quickly into the cover of a tree. Its branches hung low enough for Jamil to relax, its burden of unpicked apricots sweet in his nostrils. Under his feet, the grass was frigid with condensation and squelchy with rotting fruit so that he regretted not taking time to grab his sandals.

French doors and windows opening onto this orchard from that downstairs locked salon were protected by sturdy wrought-iron grilles. But one set of French doors stood open, and though the jinga truck party was nowhere in sight, a bobbing flashlight beam, low cursing, and the muffled bangs and thuds of men stumbling in the dark told Jamil where they'd disappeared. If they'd so easily breached the first two barriers, they'd be inside the main hallway within minutes.

Jamil slid his cell phone from his vest before he remembered Rasheed was no longer in his quarters to be summoned for help. Should he call Ameera? But that would only draw her from a locked and barred suite to rush downstairs into the intruders' arms. Jamil cast his mind back over the shape of those hurrying shadows. Had they been carrying weapons? He had to assume so. No trucker would traverse Afghanistan's dangerous roadways without armed protection.

Maybe the most prudent course would be to let them take what they were after, this runaway woman and her child. Jamil had not come to this city to get involved in the affairs of others. And if this was a matter of family and honor, it was no business for outsiders. If it were not for Ameera, would he even contemplate risking his own aspirations on behalf of those faceless, shrouded shapes that scurried away like ghosts at his appearance?

And yet there were the children, who were not faceless but vivid in Jamil's mind, crying with heart-wrenching anguish or stoic with mute bravery as he tended to their hurts, eager and smiling as they tugged him to story time, their small, warm hands and piping “Jamil-jan” carrying him unwillingly to a past he'd striven to forget. They would be terrified at strange men bursting into their sanctuary.

And even the women. What if it were his own sister or mother hidden behind those face veils, whose pitiful story was spelled out in those personnel files he'd translated for Ameera? In young Farah, had he not glimpsed courage and hope and dreams not so unlike those he'd once known? Was it possible she was not unique?

What would Isa Masih do?

The prophet in the pages he'd read tonight could never just turn his back and walk away. But what could Jamil, unarmed as he was, do against so many invaders? Without Rasheed, there was no aid to be summoned, the elderly Wajid more liability than help. Had the intruders known in plotting this raid that the compound would lie helpless? Perhaps Rasheed had let slip his plans when the jinga truck driver approached pretending to be a client.

But, wait, help did remain for the summoning. The foreigners and their subordinates who'd erected the compound's new fortifications even while danger had already crept inside its walls. The jinga truck driver had been watching and listening enough to know how to avoid the perimeter defenses. But if the alarm should be triggered, the foreigners would come running.

And yet to bring the American soldier with his too-seeing gaze back onto this property, into Ameera's orbit, his own sanctuary? The agitation and loathing that rose in Jamil at the thought choked him with its intensity, paralyzing him again with vacillation.

It was shame that freed him. What manner of man could place his own antipathy ahead of the well-being of Ameera, the children, the women Rasheed had left to his care?

What would Isa Masih do?

His mental debate had been furious and painful, but only seconds had been expended. Through the open French doors, the bobbing light beam had reached the other side of the salon. Above shuffles, suppressed coughs, whispers of men trying to be silent, Jamil heard the clink of metal against a keyhole.

Without making any further effort to avoid noise or detection, Jamil raced back through the orchard gate. Springing to pull himself up on the cinder-block partition, he vaulted over. The blast of sound exploding the night's tranquility was all he could have hoped.

Steve's first reaction to the alarm was annoyance. He'd only arrived back to the team house and his own bed—he checked the phosphorescent glow of his alarm clock—less than an hour ago.

That Steve could hear the alarm two streets and more blocks away was a reminder he'd had Mac turn it to the highest setting. Two alarms in the first eight hours wasn't the kind of record designed to improve relations with the neighbors. This was Thursday—actually, Friday now. Had some Thursday circuit party carousing its way back to their own compound done something to trip the alarm? Or maybe that wall-hopping assistant of Amy's?

False alarm or not, Steve was already tugging on his boots when his cell phone rang. He could barely make out the frantic whisper on the other end, but a far louder rendering in the background of the alarm disrupting the night outside left no doubt as to the speaker.

“Steve! The alarm went off. I can hear men inside the house.”

Steve was no longer annoyed. Now it was his M4 and tactical vest he was scooping up. Tucking his Glock into the small of his back, he started down the hall, rapping on doors, even as he demanded, “Rasheed?”

The panic in Amy's voice made that a futile suggestion. “No, he's gone for the weekend. And so is Soraya. I-I think they must be the ones after Aryana. I can hear them downstairs in the hall. I'm looking for the remote control to turn off the alarm—” The anxious whisper broke off suddenly.

Steve recognized with grim incredulity the firecracker spat punctuating the wail of the alarm.

“They're shooting! I have to get downstairs to the women and children.”

“No! Stay locked in your room. Your tenants will know to do the same. They'll have been through this kind of thing before. We'll be there in less than five. And don't turn off the alarm. You want to keep them off-balance.”

Men were already boiling out of bunk beds into the hall. Mac and Phil were among the first. Rick, Ian, and McDuff of his primary team were all on night shift, but when Steve spotted Bones emerging from a dormitory, he tossed the lanky cowboy a set of car keys.

“We've got a situation, so let's move. Bones, you're my wheels. Mac, you take the Humvee. Phil, there were shots fired so plan for casualties.”

Steve didn't need to give instructions as they divided themselves between the CS Suburban and a Humvee whose wheel Mac had taken. Phil hefted his medic pack into the Suburban. Bones had the accelerator floored before the Guatemalan guards had the gate open.

The streets were empty, and Bones continued accelerating, slamming the brakes only as they reached the checkpoint. Steve leaned out the window to shout to the Gurkha sentry as he hurried to lift the boom. By now the alarm was having its effect. All up and down the streets, compounds that had their own generators were turning on lights, armed guards swarming to walls and rooftops. The Suburban's tires screeched around the corner onto the street containing the New Hope compound.

Steve punched Redial on Amy's number. To his relief, he could hear no more gunfire on the line or through the open window. “They're retreating? That's great—it's what we want. Just stay put. We're only a few blocks out.”

The headlights picked up blue green walls with their new trim of barbed wire and broken glass at the next corner. And just beyond—

They were still half a block away when the double gates of the mechanics yard burst open, followed so immediately by a truck's massive boxy frame, its driver had clearly not bothered with a key.

Phil spoke up from the backseat. “Steve, wasn't that truck parked in the compound this afternoon?”

The SUV's headlight beams picked up a peacock motif. After lecturing Amy on internal threats, had he driven off leaving a hostile force already in place behind her defenses?

Despite their haste, the jinga truck crew couldn't back out too quickly without doing to its paneled sides what they'd done to the gates. The truck cab was still inside the gates, and with that alarm siren, maybe they hadn't yet heard the approaching vehicles.

Steve looked over at Bones. “Can you get around and cut them off?” Grabbing a Motorola hand unit from the dashboard, he radioed the Humvee. “Guys, this is our target. Don't let them get by.”

Bones had the accelerator to the floor again. For one breath-snatching moment, Steve could have sworn the truck's massive rear was going to ram the SUV like a squashed bug into the opposite compound wall. Then Bones somehow had the vehicle up on a sidewalk and jouncing back down on the other side just as the jinga truck's air brakes seized the tires to slow for the tight turn into the street. Steve could hear shouting as the occupants of the truck cab caught sight of the Humvee in a mutual glare of headlights. This time the air brakes squealed loud as the jinga truck's getaway slammed to a complete halt.

Bones skidded the SUV around to block the other side. Steve jumped out of the vehicle, marching toward the truck cab, the other contractors piling out behind him.

“Get the back!” Phil called.

As half his group peeled off, Steve swung to the running board, the butt of his M4 knocking out the window so that he had the muzzle against a bearded face before the man could reach for an AK-47 on the seat beside him. On the far side of the cab, Mac reached in to yank out the driver. From the rear, Steve heard Phil call, “Clear! We've got a bunch back here.”

“Clear! Clear!” echoed around the outside of the truck.

That quickly it was over. There were three men in the cab, ten more inside the cargo compartment. Along with the Kalashnikov in the cab, two more turned up in back along with an assortment of cudgels and sticks. These men definitely hadn't planned on a convivial discussion.

Steve turned to Bones, indicating the jinga truck. “Can you get this out of the street?”

Bones climbed into the truck cab. As its engine rumbled to life, Steve turned his attention to the prisoners. An assortment of bearded Pashtuns ranging from late teens to forties and with enough similitude to stem from the same gene pool, they had looked both frightened and stunned as they'd stumbled out of the truck. But defiance was returning as they realized the M4 barrels ringing them in were not about to be precipitously unleashed.

“We are not thieves!” the leader shouted over the racket. “We were told a runaway woman we've been searching for is in that house. We sought only to retrieve her. You have no right to detain us.”

Another was trying to calm the leader down. “I do not think she is here. Can you not see this place is a business of foreigners? We must have been given the wrong information.”

Unfortunately, it was the first man who was right. Whatever their security role, PSDs had no legal jurisdiction in Afghanistan, and the locals had shown themselves prickly about foreign civilians holding their citizens prisoner. So what to do with these men?

But first things first. Punching Redial on his cell phone, Steve announced matter-of-factly, “You can turn off that alarm now. The neighbors might appreciate getting back to bed.”

The night went mercifully silent. Then Amy's voice, breathless with relief, returned. “You got them?”

“Yes, and they were definitely after your women.”

“It was the jinga truck, wasn't it? I watched it crash the gate. I am so sorry. I saw that truck here the same day Aryana was so frightened. But there're always trucks and cars coming and going next door. I didn't even think to put two and two together.”

“You, me, and your caretaker too,” Steve dismissed firmly. “There's no point in anyone beating themselves up over this. The question is what to do with them now.”

“Do you want me to come down and talk to them? Or Aryana to see if she recognizes them?”

“Not a good idea,” Steve interdicted. “Right now with all these men around, they're thinking maybe they were mistaken. We want to encourage that thought. Why don't you get your people back to bed, and we'll handle it from here. Though you might have your guard open the gate, so we can get this bunch off the street.”

“I'm surprised he's not out there already. That noise was enough to wake the dead. I'll see if I can get him or Jamil on the phone. If not, I'll come down myself.”

That didn't prove necessary, because when Steve walked over to the pedestrian gate, it swung open under the touch of his hand. The city electricity was still off, and the compound was dark except for a single fluorescent lamp shining from a second-story window. Steve raised a hand in acknowledgment even as he spoke into the phone. “We're in.”

“Good, then I'm going to check on my people.”

The light disappeared from the window. Stepping farther inside, Steve dug a pencil flashlight from a pocket of his parka and shone it around the guard shack. Unbelievably, the elderly guard hadn't moved from his tushak, a gentle snore reassurance the sprawled figure was even alive.