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  “I was hoping we could share some intel, so that the next time something happens, it’ll be the last.”

  “Of course you were.”

  “I need to know whether or not your agency will pose any interference with my mission.”

  He threw his head back and cackled at that.

  I just stood there.

  Finally, his smile evaporated. “Joe, my agency interferes with everything. That’s what we do.”

  I envisioned myself crossing to the table, grabbing the bastard by the neck, shoving him against the wall, and saying, If you get in my way, you’ll be on my target list.

  “No help from you, then.”

  He shrugged. “Have you met the provincial governor?”

  I shook my head.

  “You should. The people here want him dead more than Zahed. You want to be a hero, kill him.”

  “Are you nuts?”

  “Look at me, Joe. I could be sitting in a hotel room in Laughlin, going downstairs every night to gamble my ass off, drink my ass off, and have sex with a different hooker every night. But no, I’m here. Of course, I’m nuts.”

  “You doing this for America?”

  He gave me a sarcastic salute and said, “Apple pie, baby.”

  “If I told you that I wanted to talk to Zahed, would you be able to get word back to him?”

  “That might depend on what you want to discuss.” Bronco withdrew another cigarette from his breast pocket and was about to light it up when I answered:

  “I want to discuss the terms of his surrender.”

  He dropped his Zippo and looked up. “Dude, you are a comedian. I’m so glad you came.”

  “Do you know anything about EMP disruption being used by the Taliban?”

  “You’re talking Star Trek to me. What?”

  “Weapons that disrupt electronic devices. Have you seen or heard anything about Zahed’s people using weapons like that?”

  He lit his cigarette and took a long drag. “Go home, Joe.”

  I grinned crookedly. “I was kinda hoping we could be friends.”

  He hoisted a brow. “Well, I do enjoy your humor and sarcasm, but to be honest, you’re pretty much screwed here…”

  I caught up with Shilmani out near the town’s old well, which would soon run dry. He was loading water jugs onto a flatbed, and the old man behind the wheel of the idling pickup got out when he spotted me.

  Mirab Mir Burki wore cream-colored robes with a long white sash draped over his shoulders. His turban sat very low on his head and drooped at the same angles as his eyes. Bushy gray brows furrowed as he cut off my approach. “If you’re going to ask all the same questions, then don’t bother,” he snapped in Pashto.

  “I’m not here to interview you,” I said in English.

  He looked to Shilmani, who set down his jug and translated quickly.

  “What do you want?” asked Burki.

  “They’re going to build you a new well,” I said.

  Burki answered quickly in broken English. “They talk and talk. But no well.”

  “They will dig it soon.”

  “You are Captain Harruck’s friend?”

  I gave a slow if somewhat tentative nod, then said, “I’m very worried about what will happen to the new well, though. We must protect it from the Taliban.”

  Shilmani translated, and Burki suddenly threw up his hands and climbed back in the car.

  I looked at Shilmani. “What did I say?”

  Shilmani took a deep breath. “He doesn’t want you to protect the well from the Taliban, remember?”

  “Yeah,” I groaned. “Now I do. I’m in a difficult situation right now. If I can just remove Zahed, then maybe your boss can negotiate for water rights with the next guy.”

  “He’s very upset about the bridge. We have to drive fifteen kilometers to cross at the next one.”

  “Why do you need to cross?”

  “To make our deliveries in Sangsar.”

  “To the Taliban.”

  He glanced away. “Scott, I did not contact any of your men. Why are you here?”

  “I need you to help me find Zahed.”

  “It’s too dangerous for me right now — especially with the bridge destroyed.”

  Burki started hollering for Shilmani to finish up. I raised a palm. “It’s okay. For now. When you’re ready.”

  His eyes grew glassy before he looked away and finished loading his last jug.

  My boots dragged through the sand as I crossed back to the Hummer.

  I thought about that little girl who’d been raped and kept pinning that on Zahed so he could remain the “bad guy” in my head. But then I heard Harruck saying that maybe she’d been raped without Zahed’s knowledge. Maybe he wasn’t linked to a lot of the crime going on. Maybe he would, in the end, do much more for the people than the government could.

  After biting my lips and swearing once more, I hopped into the Hummer, and the private took the wheel. “Where to now, sir?”

  “They got a bar around here?”

  He laughed. “Uh, no, sir.”

  I smelled something. Gasoline. Burning. I looked at the private. “Get out!”

  TEN

  I opened the door and looked back to spot a burning rag stuffed into our open fuel tank. Both the private and I ran from the truck just as, in the next second, the tank ruptured under a muffled explosion and flames began rushing up the sides. There was no heaving of the HMMWV off the ground, no cinema-like burst of flames, but black smoke and a thick stench spread quickly as I drew my sidearm and scanned the row of houses behind us.

  There he was. A kid, maybe eighteen. Running.

  “Come on!” I shouted to the private.

  Off to my left, Shilmani and Burki were already on their way off, but the truck stopped. Shilmani bailed out and started after us.

  The private, whose name I’d already forgotten, and I charged down the street after the wiry guy, who sprinted like a triathlete. We reached the next intersection, glanced around at all the laundry spanning the alleyways, and the kid was gone.

  “I’m sorry, sir,” said the private.

  “Yeah. Call it in.”

  As the private got on his radio, I walked back toward Shilmani, who threw his hands in the air and yelled, “It won’t be a big attack now. It’ll be this. Every day. Day after day. Until they wear you down.”

  “I get it,” I answered. “But I’m pretty tough. We’re tough. They don’t torch one Hummer and expect me to go home. No way, pal.”

  “This is not the war you expected. This will never be the war you expected.” He spun on his heel and jogged back toward Burki and the truck, now sagging under the weight of water jugs.

  We left the alley and returned to the small crowd watching our truck burn. That was two Hummers I’d lost since coming to Senjaray. I was cursed.

  The private told me at least three other patrols had also been attacked in a coordinated effort by Taliban residing inside the village. Shilmani was, of course, right. We’d be harassed and terrorized, even as we tried to help.

  I was in my quarters, reviewing all the data Army intelligence had gathered from the aforementioned Predator drones, when Harruck arrived. He stood in the doorway with the XO at his shoulder.

  “Next time you head into town, I’ll need you with a more heavily armed escort,” he said tersely.

  “Next time I’ll ride my bike. Then again, they might try to blow that up, too.”

  “Well, there it is, Scott. Before you got here, my patrols were attacked two, maybe three times at the most. Now it’s begun.”

  “You know, I actually considered what you said — putting the word out to Zahed. But I can’t even find a way to do that.”

  “You can’t stop trying.”

  “I want to meet with Kundi and the provincial governor — what the hell’s his name again?”

  “You mean the district governor. Naimut Gul,” he said. “And they call the meeting a shura. And there’s no reas
on for you to meet with either of them. I’m taking care of all that, and within the next week I’ll have a document signed by all twelve elders.”

  “You going to get Zahed to sign it, too?”

  He just glared at me. “I assume you spoke to Bronco?”

  “You think I wouldn’t?”

  Harruck grinned weakly. “He’s no help. I’ve already tried. His buddies in Kandahar handle our prisoners, and that’s about the extent of it. I think they’re working on something with the opium trade that goes way over Zahed’s head.”

  “Have you tried tailing him?”

  “Who? Bronco? I don’t have the resources.”

  “I do. Maybe I’m not your biggest problem here, Simon. Maybe he is…”

  “The agency’s got its own agenda, no doubt. I even heard a rumor about the NSA having field agents out here, but I think my mission is too damned simple to be on their radar.”

  “You never know…”

  I spent about a week laying low and examining imagery from the drones, trying to pick out Zahed among the thousands of people living in his village. Twice, I’d thought I’d seen him in the bazaar, but I couldn’t be sure. A half dozen Army intelligence analysts back home were doing the same thing, but I always thought a guy behind a desk somewhere in Virginia might not notice the same things as a grunt in the sand.

  My Ghosts continued to pose as regular Army and help with defenses along the defile leading down into Senjaray. Harruck’s patrols were harassed by gunfire a few more times, but no one was hurt, and the attackers, after firing a few rounds, fled before they could be caught. I contended that teenagers sympathetic to the Taliban were to blame.

  Anderson, along with the Army Corps of Engineers and a half dozen other aid groups, began moving in building materials and breaking ground for the school and the police station, which would be constructed directly north of the defile so that locals could best defend them from attack.

  Our replacement Cross-Coms arrived, but I was hesitant to have the guys use them until we pinpointed the source of the disruption.

  I assigned Ramirez and Beasley to maintain surveillance on Bronco, who’d been spending a lot of time with landowner Kundi, water man Burki, and a few more of the elders from Senjaray and the other towns in the district.

  Bronco hadn’t gone over to Sangsar, as I suspected he would. Ramirez told me that the engineers had assessed the damage we’d caused to the bridge and estimated it would take four to six months to complete repairs. We wouldn’t be in country long enough to see that happen, I assured him.

  One night I took a four-man team into the mountains to run some long-range surveillance via Cypher drone and make another attempt to lure out the Taliban and their disruption devices. Nolan flew the drone in low enough for them to have heard and seen it, but there was no response.

  “Ghost Lead, this is Jenkins. Suggest we move in past the wall, over.”

  The guys were trying to goad me into a close recon of the village, but they always did that. They’d grown restless and longed for the sound of gunfire. They didn’t need good intel or just cause — just a clear night and full magazines. I was supposed to think responsibly.

  “Negative. Hold position.”

  “You’re not listening to Harruck, are you?” Ramirez whispered to me from his position at my elbow.

  “No reason to swat the hornets yet,” I said.

  “I don’t know, boss. Something’s gotta give.”

  I glanced over at him; he was right.

  The next morning, Marcus Brown woke me from a sound sleep. There was trouble out in the old poppy field where the Army engineers had proposed to drill the next well.

  Kundi was there, causing a big ruckus, as were Harruck, Anderson, and a half dozen other engineers and construction supervisors.

  Brown and I drove out there, and Harruck pulled me aside and told me I “wasn’t involved.”

  “That’s fine. So I’ll just watch. And listen,” I told him, my tone making it clear that I wasn’t going anywhere.

  “So what’s the bottom line?” one of the Army engineers asked Kundi.

  “That’s it,” said Kundi, who was waving his hand over the broad area within which the drilling would occur. About fifty yards to the south lay the base of the foothills — a mottled brown moonscape of pockmarks and stones rising up toward orange-colored peaks. “You cannot put the well here. Over there, on the other side of the field, yes.”

  “But we’ll have to drill a lot deeper over there,” said the engineer.

  Kundi shook his head.

  “Why not? Is this some kind of sacred ground?”

  Kundi frowned and looked over to Burki, who in turn cast a quizzical glance at Shilmani, whom they’d obviously brought along to translate. He did, and Kundi nodded vigorously. “Yes, yes. God is here!”

  I turned to Brown. “You know what God wants? He wants ground-penetrating radar and metal detectors all over this area.”

  Brown nodded. “Hallelujah.”

  A couple of days later, Harruck caught up with me in the mess hall and wanted an explanation for my request to have a team go out into the field with radar units and metal detectors. I’d had to put in those requests through regular Army channels, Gordon had told me, so Harruck’s interference came as little surprise.

  “Kundi’s hiding something out there,” I said.

  “So what if he is?” Harruck asked. “If we instigate him, the agreement goes south.”

  “We need to have a look.”

  “We’re telling him we don’t trust him if we got guys sweeping the ground out there.”

  “Tell him I lost my watch.”

  “Don’t be an ass, Scott. Who knows why he doesn’t want a well over there? Maybe he plans to grow cannabis there, plant cherry trees, who knows? So we move the well to the other side of the field. No big deal. Drill a little deeper. If he’s got a bone buried — or an opium stash — out there, I don’t want to know about it. Not right now, anyway.”

  “So you’ll look the other way on that, too.”

  “I’m just taking my time. So should you…”

  “That a threat? Because we both know where this will go.”

  “Scott, this whole damned country is full of thugs and gangsters. You’ll run out of fingers to point. So let’s move on.”

  Harruck took his tray to another table to join the rest of his officers. Anderson was at a nearby table, and she came over to me and said, “Have you seen the site yet? We’re breaking ground for the school.”

  I shook my head.

  “You look finished here. Why don’t you come out and take a look?”

  I shrugged and followed her outside. She had a civilian car, a Pathfinder, and she drove me over to the construction site, where at least fifty workers were placing broad wooden footers in the ground. Several concrete trucks were parked behind us, and piles of rebar and pallets of concrete blocks were stacked in long rows.

  “All these guys that you hired… they’re from the village?”

  “Some from this one… some from the others… but we’ve had a little problem, which is really why I brought you out here…”

  “You weren’t trying to soften me up? Turn me into a humanitarian or something?”

  “No. I need you to be a killer.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Oh, I figure you’re intel or spec ops or something…”

  “I’m just an adviser.”

  “Right…”

  “How many classrooms in this building?”

  “Six. It’s going to be beautiful when we’re done. And the police station will be right out there. See the stakes?”

  I shielded my eyes from the glare and noted the wooden stakes that outlined the L-shaped building.

  “Yeah, we’re going to build it, and they’ll come and blow it back up.”

  “You mean Zahed?”

  I shrugged.

  “Maybe not. I think Zahed is forcing the workers to give some of their pay to
the Taliban. And I think when the school and the police station open, he’ll try to control the police. He’ll close down the school, too, but not right away — if he thinks he can make a buck.”

  “What makes you think he’s blackmailing the workers?”

  “At the end of the week when they’re paid, three men come around, and they form a line. I’ve seen them giving some of their money to those guys.”

  “You pay them in afghanis?”

  “It’s the only way.”

  “Tell you what? The next time that happens, come find me. I’ll have a talk with them.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Why didn’t you bring this to Captain Harruck?”

  “I did. He told me that it wasn’t any of my business what the workers did with their money.”

  “Maybe it isn’t.”

  “I just… I don’t like it. Feels like we’re in bed with the Taliban.”

  I grinned crookedly and told her I needed to get back.

  Three things happened at once when I reached my quarters:

  Nolan was telling me I had an urgent call from Lieutenant Colonel Gordon…

  Bronco had come onto the base and was screaming at me to have my two bulldogs chained up and to stop following him…

  And a young captain I’d trained myself at Robin Sage, Fred Warris, was standing at my door, waiting to speak to me.

  In fact, he was in the same training class that Harruck and I had taught, which I initially thought was a coincidence. I’d heard that Warris had gone on to become a Ghost leader, so his presence outside my billet was suspicious… and strange.

  I lifted a palm as all three men vied for my attention, but Nolan shouted:

  “Sir, like I said… it’s urgent. Something about your father back home.”

  ELEVEN

  Nolan told me the call had come from the comm center, so I ran across the base, leaving the shouters behind. I reached the center and discovered that Gordon was on a webcam and seated at his desk back at Fort Bragg. He wanted to talk to me “face to face.”