3
Khost Province
Afghanistan
WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED down there?”
Randi Russell swept the helicopter over the village at about 120 meters, passing through the haze created by still-smoldering buildings. She kept her attention on the controls and let the redheaded soldier next to her survey the scene through a set of binoculars. It would have been more practical to just come in lower, but there was a stiff wind blowing upcanyon and she was admittedly not the best pilot in Afghanistan. Truth be told, she might not have been the best pilot at your average Cub Scout meeting.
“What are you seeing, Deuce?”
“Weird shit—so, basically, the same thing I see every day. I vote we head back to base, get a drink, and forget all about this. It’s almost happy hour.”
Randi risked a look down at the bodies strewn across the sand and the bizarre blooms of blood growing from the tops of about half. Weird shit? Definitely. But not your everyday weird shit.
“I’d like to get a closer look.”
The man turned toward her, alarm visible on his face. “Whoa now, girl. You’re not going to try to fly low, are you?”
She gave him a withering glance. “I was thinking more about landing.”
“Come on, Randi. There’s not so much as a lizard alive down there and those canyon walls are sniper heaven. Happy hour. I’m buying.”
“When did you turn into such an old lady?”
In truth, Lieutenant Deuce Brennan was one of the most talented special forces operatives the U.S. military had ever turned out. She’d been unimpressed by his Howdy Doody looks and frat-boy demeanor when he’d arrived in country, but now used every excuse in the book to make sure he was the one watching her back.
“Look, I love you, Randi. You know I do. You’ve given me a whole new respect for you useless CIA types. But I’d like to leave here with all my body parts intact one day. And the longer I know you, the less likely that seems.”
“Five minutes,” she said, slowing to a hover and easing back the power. “Then the margaritas are on me.”
It wasn’t a bad landing by her standards, though some of the credit went to the soft sand. They jumped out immediately, a bit of an odd couple with him in full combat gear and her in khaki cargo pants and a matching T-shirt.
A scarf hid the short blond hair that made her stand out so badly in this part of the world, and she reached up to make sure none was peeking out as Deuce moved north. His eyes swept smoothly across the shadows thrown by the burned-out buildings that yesterday had been a thriving village mildly sympathetic to America’s fading occupation.
Confident that she was covered, Randi started toward the body of a young woman and crouched for a moment, examining the bullet wound in her chest and the fear still frozen into her face.
The next corpse was ten meters away and was an example of what had interested her so much from the air. There was a similar bullet wound in the chest, but the body had been decapitated and in place of the head was a circle of sand stained black by blood.
She moved from body to body, finally drawing her Beretta when she found herself among the blackened buildings. Deuce was visible about a hundred meters away and gave her the thumbs-up. Obviously, he was finding the same thing she was. Death.
Randi ducked through the door of a tiny cube of a house, holding her breath against the stench of burned human flesh and finding two charred bodies in the still-glowing embers. Both had managed to keep their heads and, judging by their size, both were children.
She reemerged into the fresh air and sunlight, continuing her search but finding no break in the pattern. No weapons. Decapitated men. Intact women and children.
She’d been sent there by Fred Klein to investigate what he had characterized—with customary vagueness—as “suspicious mercenary activity.”
She saw no evidence of that, though. The attackers had worn traditional local footwear and there were visible gouges from horse hooves—hardly standard merc gear.
That wasn’t to say that this was the result of one of the normal rival village skirmishes that had been going on in the area for a thousand years. Beyond the bizarre decapitations, she couldn’t make sense of the story told by the tracks of the village’s male casualties. A few seemed to have run a short distance but not at the full sprint warranted by the situation. And none showed any evidence that they’d tried to defend themselves or their families. How was that possible for a people who had slapped around everyone from Alexander the Great to the Soviet Union?
A quiet crunch became audible to her right. She spun smoothly, bringing her pistol level with the sound.
“Don’t shoot! It’s me,” Deuce said, appearing from around a mud wall.
She holstered her weapon. “Anything?”
“They must have been taken by surprise,” he said with a shake of the head. “Whoever took them out also made off with their weapons and hauled away any of their own casualties. That is, if there were any. I can’t find any unaccounted-for blood or footprints of attackers that look like they took a hit.”
“You find the heads?”
“Nope.”
She let out a long breath and shaded her eyes from the sun sinking in the west. She’d known these people. In fact, she’d convinced the agency to fund a project to get them clean water. They were good Muslims, but had no love for the Taliban.
“Hard to believe that they’d get caught flat-footed like this,” Deuce said.
“Impossible to believe. They were good fighters and they knew damn well they had enemies—some that go back hundreds of years and some new ones who know they sided with us a few times. There’s no way in hell someone just rolled in here and wiped them out.”
“Looks to me like that’s exactly what happened.”
A gunshot sounded and she ducked involuntarily, drawing her weapon and listening to the clang of a round hitting metal.
“Shit!” Deuce said. “It’s coming from the south wall of the canyon. They’re going for the helicopter!”
Randi slid her back against the sooty building as more shots rang out. The wind was picking up and the sniper could only manage a hit every two or three times but the chopper was pretty much devoid of armor. One lucky hit and they’d have to decide between the humiliation of calling in a rescue and a long, dangerous walk home.
She came to the edge of her cover and strolled across a dirt track to a wall on the other side. The deliberately slow pace had its intended effect and she saw a round kick up dust a meter or so to her right. Hopefully, the sniper would forget about the chopper now that he knew flesh-and-blood targets were on the menu.
“I’m guessing that guy has friends,” Deuce shouted. He fired off a volley in the general direction of their attacker, but his weapon wasn’t designed for that kind of range. “Word’s gonna get out about our visit pretty quick.”
Randi pointed at a headless body about halfway between them and the helicopter. “We’ll go on my mark. But on the way, we’re picking up that body. I want an autopsy.”
“An autopsy?” Deuce said incredulously. “I mean, I don’t have a medical degree or anything, but I’m pretty sure the cause of death was the bullet in his chest or the fact that his freakin’ head is gone!”
“I didn’t come all this way to leave empty-handed.”
He fired a few additional rounds, more out of frustration than from any hope they would dissuade the sniper trying to zero in on them. “I swear, Randi. Someday, when no one is looking, I’m gonna kill you myself.”