by Eric Meyer
Greg gave him an uneasy glance. “What do I do?”
“Go straight through.”
“There’s a cop standing in the way!”
“He’ll jump. Put your foot down, and hit the horn.”
Greg banged the heel of his palm on the big horn button, and the blare of the klaxon was like a foghorn on a transatlantic ocean liner. It was enough, and the cop dove to one side as the heavy GAZ thundered past, and the pole disintegrated into fragments at the side of the road. Stoner chuckled as they left the makeshift roadblock behind, and then he heard his cellphone ring.
“Stoner.”
“You think you can play games with me?” Captain Hosseini’s voice, cold and hostile.
“Now that you mention it, it’s been a lot of fun. What do you want, Hosseini?”
“My officer ordered you to stop. Disobeying a police order and damaging police property is illegal. You will return to Jalalabad immediately, report to the police station, and consider yourself under arrest. Do not make this worse for yourself, Stoner.”
“What’re you after, Hosseini, a bigger bribe? You looking to buy yourself a vacation home somewhere nice and peaceful? I hear Syria is attractive these days. You should go there.”
“You’re going to jail for a long time, Stoner, and I can’t wait to look at you through the bars. Maybe some of your pals as well. I have accommodation for all of them. Men, women, and children.”
He suddenly tired of the stupid exchange. This was different. “You listen to me, Hosseini. You touch my friends, and you die.”
“Is that a threat?”
“Not at all, Captain Hosseini. It’s a promise. A fifty-caliber promise.”
He ended the call and sat back to relax. He had bigger problems to work out at present, but when he got back, there’d be a reckoning. During the long journey he looked at Sara, and she was asleep, despite the jarring ride. Her head lolled on Wayne’s shoulder, and he felt a pang of jealousy. He recalled the time they’d rescued her from the caves and got back to Jbad. There’d been a spark of something between them, but not anymore. Now she had Evers.
How could she go for a guy like Wayne? What is he, an untamed mountain man? It isn’t right.
Wayne chose that moment to lean over and talk to him.
“I was at the caves a few days ago, and it’s starting to fill up with insurgents. Not as many as last time, but they’re there. Different faces, same black hearts. Getting near would be difficult, but we’ll be okay if we just stand off, wait for the target to show, and I pull the trigger. This’ll be a walk in the park.”
He grimaced. “Wayne, you know it won’t be that easy, it never is. Why did you go back to the caves after you disappeared?”
“Why?” He scratched his head, seeking an answer, “I dunno. Maybe it’s because it felt like I was going home. All those years, I guess a guy gets attached to a place. I kind of like the peace. It’s something spiritual.”
He chuckled. “Rather you than me. I wouldn’t have lasted fifteen days up there, let alone fifteen years.”
“That’s because you’re not a marine.”
They drove through a shallow valley, and the roar of the crude, Soviet engine rebounded back off the rock walls to make conversation impossible. He tried to relax, but failed. Life was stacking up against him, and Sara Carver’s icy disdain was a complication he could have done without. He glanced aside at her sleeping form, and once again admired everything about her.
Why has she come here? I get that she’s a journo after a story, but why is she chasing it in the most dangerous place on earth? And what’s the attraction of Wayne Evers? Lucky bastard.
He snapped out of it as the border crossing appeared a half kilometer ahead, looking forward to the moment when he could exit the uncomfortable Soviet motorized monstrosity to stretch his legs.
A metallic noise made him look at Evers, who’d unsafed the AKM assault rifle he carried.
“What’s up?”
He shook his head. “I dunno. Something’s not right. Nothing for certain, but…I can almost smell it.”
Stoner nodded. He had a healthy respect for Wayne’s almost uncanny ability to feel the living, breathing pulse of the rough, mountainous terrain. It was almost as if he could sense even a slight deviation in the passage of air over the snow-covered slopes, and understand the reason for it.
“Wayne, you’d better wake her up. Tell her to lock and load.”
“It may be nothing.”
Stoner stared back at him. “This is Afghanistan. It’s never nothing.”
“Right.”
Wayne nudged the girl. She groaned and opened her eyes. “What is it?”
“We may have a problem.”
“What kind of a problem?”
“The shooting kind. Have your gun ready.”
She reached into her purse, a huge, leather shoulder bag that looked big enough to accommodate a small sailing dinghy. The weapon she pulled out was a surprise. A huge automatic with a barrel he estimated at five inches. She slid out the magazine from the butt, checked the load, and reinserted it into the gun. Chambered a round and looked at Wayne through big, liquid-brown eyes.
“I’m ready.”
Evers gave the pistol a quick inspection and held out his big paw. “Let me look at that thing.” She handed it to him.
“Knock yourself out.”
“What kind of gun is this?”
“A present from my dad when I came back from Afghanistan the last time. He said if I needed to shoot anyone, to make sure it counted. So he bought me the Wildey, fires a .475 Magnum bullet.”
“Impressive.”
She shrugged. “What kind of gun do you carry, Wayne?”
“Colt 1911, same as I carried all through my Marine service. Don’t see any reason to change.”
“Stay with what you know, that’s what my godfather always told me.”
“You mean the President?”
She didn’t get a chance to reply.
“Hold up!” Stoner called out Greg, who trod on the brake pedal, “Could be trouble up ahead.”
The border crossing was near. On the other side, Ivan’s distinctive SUV was waiting in the queue to re-enter Afghanistan. The Pakistani border guards were checking the truck in front of him, and a few meters away, Afghan soldiers lounged against the red and white pole, watching proceedings with little interest. He could see the distinctive figures of Gorgy Bukharin and Akram Latif, standing at the side of the Land Cruiser, smoking and chatting. An innocent enough scene, until his eyes shifted further away to the ground halfway between where they waited and the border crossing.
A group of men emerged from the foothills on the Afghan side, jogging toward the soldiers. Nothing unusual. Afghanistan had no shortage of armed men, who may have a sound reason for wanting to cross over into Pakistan, except they were in a hurry. The body language even from a half-kilometer away suggested they had something on their minds. In this wild and lawless land, the safest course was to assume the worst. He assumed the worst.
“Greg, hit the gas. Get moving. I don’t like the look of those guys.”
He started moving. “Stoner, there are a lot more of them than us. What did you have in mind?”
“If they’re hostiles, they’re about to hit the border post, and there’s going to be one hell of a fight. We have to fire a few shots, warn the border guards.”
He glanced back at Wayne and Sara. “This could get hairy.”
“We get that,” Evers replied, his voice tinged with irony, “What do we do, charge straight in like the Seventh Cavalry, and blast everything that moves?”
“That should do it.”
He pulled out the Desert Eagles he carried under his coat. Snapped out the magazine from each gun, checked the load, and pushed them back in. Not that there was any need, he’d checked them twice before he left Jalalabad. But it was one of those rituals soldiers carry out before going into action, a kind of superstition. If they omitted to do it
just once, that would be the time they'd take the bullet that killed them.
The GAZ was careering along the track flat out, which wasn’t saying much. The old, inefficient Soviet designed and built engine roared, and they were still two hundred meters away from them when the armed men sensed trouble coming their way. One shouted a warning, and they stopped, looking at each other in confusion. There was no way they were veterans of the insurgency, and Stoner knew his initial instinct to charge them down had been the right one. They closed to within one hundred meters. Some started pulling back the charging bolts on their rifles, ready to open fire.
Greg glanced at him. “What you want me to do? Another few seconds, and they’ll start blasting us.”
“Keep your foot down. Wayne, Sara, get ready to fire. Knock the bastards down before they have a chance to hit us. Stand by. Fire!”
He aimed and pulled the triggers on both Desert Eagles. The big .50 caliber handguns boomed out their message of death, and he kept pulling the triggers until the firing pins clicked on empty. Snapped out the empties, slammed in new magazines, and Sara joined in with single, aimed shots with the big Wildey. Men were falling, and as they reached them, Greg was unable to avoid the bodies sprawled on the road, and the GAZ bumped over dead and dying.
The survivors had retreated to the side of the track, and they dove for cover. Some started to shoot back, and bullets whistled and whined around them. They kept firing, turning the would-be insurgents into bloody ruin. Two men retreated further away and climbed up a dried-up stream bed to the lower slopes of the hillside.
“Pull up!” Stoner shouted, “We have to get after them. If we leave them, they’ll snipe at us from up there.”
He grabbed for the frame of the windshield as the Russian jeep squealed to a halt. Before it stopped, he leapt out, with Wayne right behind him. They ran for the foot of the slope, and Stoner pointed to the left.
“You take that side. There’s some kind of a path. I’ll go up the channel after them. We should be able to flank them.”
“Copy that.”
He pulled and scrambled his way up the narrow cut in the rocks where a mountain stream had once flowed. He’d tucked his handguns into the holsters, needing both hands to make the climb. The risk was if the hostiles stopped before the top and took potshots at him while he was fully exposed. He made it to the top of the first slope and pulled himself onto a narrow plateau. Ducked down as two shots whined past his head, and he had to take them fast. More enemy gunfire spattered the ground around him, and he kept low to make a small a target as possible.
He could see them crouched behind a barricade of boulders on the far side of the narrow plateau, about thirty meters in front. Pinpoints of light winked out as they fired again, and he ducked and weaved across the ground to put them off their aim. Two bullets plucked at his coat, but he gritted his teeth and ran on. One hostile suddenly started to climb the far slope, trying to get away, but the second man stayed in place. Resolute, determined to slaughter the infidel. He stood to take aim and unleashed a torrent of bullets on full auto.
Stoner was rolling away from the fusillade, and every shot went wide. He catapulted to his feet when the shooting stopped. The insurgent was reloading. He snatched out both Desert Eagles, aimed, and opened fire. The heavy bullets smashed into the rock, startling the hostile who looked around wildly for a way to escape. Too late, Stoner was almost on him. He took a flying leap over the rough barricade, both pistols empty, but he didn’t need bullets, not this close.
He reached out, grabbed the man with one hand, and smashed the barrel of the heavy pistol down on his head. His mouth opened, displaying a row of rotting, blackened teeth. He screamed something that could have been rage or pain or both, as hard steel slammed into his skull. But he was young and quick, recovering fast and twisting away, trying to swing around his AK to get in a shot.
Big mistake, pal, in a hand-to-hand fight, a cumbersome assault rifle is the wrong weapon.
The Afghan wanted to kill him. To rip the life from deep inside the infidel who’d come here to interfere with a sacred task given him by the anointed of the Prophet. Stoner had other ideas. He ducked low and stuck out a hand to grab the man’s ankle. Pulled hard, and the Afghan tumbled to the ground. Stoner leapt on him and smashed down with the heavy pistol. Once, twice, and the guy was still writhing and twisting like an eel.
He almost missed the hand that dropped to the sash, and it was more instinct than anything else that made him look. Like most Afghans, he carried a dagger tucked into the wide cloth belt. Stoner drove his knee into the man’s groin, and this time the scream was pure pain, no time or energy to spare for rage. He shot his hands down to protect the pain center, and Stoner hit him. Two bunched fists, an almost perfect one, two, three combination that landed on his bearded chin, the next punch square on the nose, and then another to his chin. His hands flew up to try to protect his face, and Stoner kneed him again.
The man whined in pitiful desperation, unable to stop the painful assaults. Stoner rose to his feet, stretching out his hand so the bony edge was blade-shaped, and brought it down on the exposed larynx. He applied all his bodyweight to land the blow, and there was no more sound, apart from the expelling of air as he breathed his last. He stayed in that position for a moment more, recovering his breath, and started to get up, throwing himself down again as a rifle shot whistled past his head. The insurgent who’d escaped up the slope had found a small ledge from where he could shoot his AK assault rifle.
He glanced around for cover, but apart from the body of the man he’d just killed, he was in the open, with an enemy sniping down at him from high up on the hillside. He couldn’t reach him, not easily, and he was almost out of options. Until he saw Wayne Evers, scrambling up the rocks toward the sniper. The guy could fill him full of holes before Wayne reached him. In desperation, he hit the ground again and tucked in close to the body of the dead man. Three shots spat out. The characteristic lower velocity reports of a 7.62mm bullet fired from an AK-47, and two bullets smacked into the body. The third shot was higher pitched, a high velocity round, like those fired from a marksman’s weapon. Sniper rifles, like the Dragunov Greg had brought with him in the GAZ.
The 7.62mm hollow-point round slammed into the man. The bullet took him in the chest and threw him over backward. In the final fraction of a second, just as the bullet hit, Stoner watched the man’s chest tear open by the kinetic energy of the hollow-point round. He was dead. There was no need to make certain. He went to the edge of the plateau and looked down to the track. Greg was looking up at him with the Dragunov still held to his shoulder. He waved his thanks and noticed Sara standing beside him, the big handgun held pointing upward.
Nice to know you’ve got my back, even if you do think I’m Satan reincarnated.
When he looked around, another young Afghan had appeared, crouched in a cleft between the rocks. Stoner’s gun barrel pointed straight at him. The boy shivered enough to start a minor earthquake, although something about him suggested he wasn’t a hostile. He walked closer, keeping the muzzle of his gun aimed in the center of his chest.
“You speak English?”
He nodded an affirmative, although it was hard to distinguish the gesture from his overall shaking.
“Were you with these men?”
“No, no!” It came out as a croak, “They were going to kill me. You saved my life.”
He explained he was a goatherd, looking after his flock in the region close to the border, where most men stayed well clear because of the trouble. “I know it’s a risk, but I come here because the grazing is much better, and I like the peace.” He shrugged, “Well, usually I like the peace. It’s not always like this.”
“Where are your goats?”
His expression soured. “They stole them, and sent one of their men to take them back to their camp. Wherever that is.”
“My guess is Tora Bora,” Stoner murmured absently.
His head jerked up. “Tora Bora?
I often go there during the summer, when the snow has melted, and the grazing is even better.”
“Where are you from?”
“Asadabad. It is about the same distance to Tora Bora as it is to this place.” He was starting to relax, now he knew he wasn’t going to be killed, and his shivering eased, “My name is Ghulam Samar, Sir. I owe you a debt of gratitude for saving me from those men.”
“I wasn’t saving you. I was killing them.”
He shrugged. “The debt is the same. Tell me how I can repay you.”
“Forget it.”
Evers was coming toward him, and he waited for him to get close.
“What happened, Wayne? I thought you were coming up to take them from the flank.”
He shrugged an apology. “I slipped on some loose shale, and by the time I made it to the top, it was all over. Sorry about that, Stoner. Next time, I’ll be there for you.”
“Yeah. We’d better go down and see how things are. Those border guards are going to be pretty antsy after the shooting, and Ivan will be worried in case his tame killers didn’t survive.”
He slid back down the slope to the main track where Greg and Sara waited beside the GAZ. Wayne glanced at them, and then disappeared out of sight, heading back to the ridge. Four Afghan soldiers were waiting as they walked toward the border post, and they all began to shout orders in incomprehensible Pashto, waving their guns to illustrate their point. Stoner ignored them and looked at Sara.
“You didn’t get hit? I noticed they were sending plenty of stray lead in your direction.”
“Greg looked after me.”
The tone was no less frigid, and he didn’t miss the implication. Greg had been there to take care of things, while he went chasing his ass up the slope. Before he could reply, the Afghan Sergeant stomped up to him and thrust his rifle in his face, shouting more incomprehensible orders.
Stoner stared back, and his gaze was cold enough to freeze nitrogen. The man stepped back, and he asked him, “Do you speak English?”
“You are American?”
“As apple pie. Tell your men to stand down. The fun’s over.”