by Ty Patterson
The square, almost a circle, was small. Just an opening in the village, houses set back.
At one time, residents probably gathered to gossip. Meet one another. Practices that probably stopped when the Taliban took over the village.
At one end was the street they had entered. At the other end was a large street. Small lanes ran out from the square, winding between the houses.
The smell of urine wafted occasionally.
Houses surrounded the central place, their roofs touching. A sole tea vendor was hawking his beverages.
Old men and women gathered and waited for Bidar to start trading.
No young people , especially no young women , Zeb observed, as he helped. Other than the gunmen, ten of whom ringed the square, watching indifferently.
The first product to be sold was grain. An old woman carried a sack away.
Business was brisk. The residents laughed and joked with the storekeeper, ignoring Zeb, which suited him.
Two hundred residents. Afghan families are larger than most Western families. So, five or six to a family. Assume five. That makes it about forty houses in the village.
He had counted eight on his way in. Seven circled the square.
Rest of the village is probably on that other street.
He had a rough plan for escape once he recovered the operatives.
Distraction. Arrange several explosions in the village that will draw the terrorists away.
Leave the village by climbing down the cliff to his Jeep.
The holes in his plan that he still needed to fill did not include arranging the explosions. In several previous missions, he had used multiple, synchronized blasts to give the effect of waves of attack. He would use the same tactic here.
The biggest question mark remained the physical condition of the operatives. Could they manage to climb down the cliff, hustle to the Jeep, repel attacks?
I won’t know unless I see them.
He smiled blankly as an old woman chattered at him and heaved a basket over her head.
He straightened when there was a lull and stretched, his eyes flicking casually over the village.
He had a feeling the cliff he had been planning to climb was nearby.
Behind us. Beyond those houses facing the square.
He wandered off to stretch his legs and drifted closer to the residences.
Dark lane. A figure resting against a wall. A gunman.
Another house visible and behind that blue sky.
Which meant he was right.
Buoyed, he returned and helped Bidar out.
‘It will slow down during lunchtime,’ the storekeeper said, as he wiped sweat from his face.
It did.
Bidar sat on an upturned crate and unwrapped his lunch.
‘I need to go,’ Zeb said, shifting uncomfortably on his feet.
Bidar looked at him, puzzled and then his face cleared.
‘Behind any house. Find a wall.’
Zeb went to the far street where he thought the rest of the village was, moving casually, glancing around and finding no one was paying attention to him.
He entered the passage and found out why it was dark. It hadn’t been obvious from the square.
Roofs jut out, sheltering the street. Maybe for protection from rain.
He hurried, stretching on his toes whenever he passed a window.
He saw no one of significance.
He was three houses deep when the street widened and a fork appeared. To his left, a branch headed off.
Towards the cliff.
Straight ahead, more houses, curving away as the passage bent.
Decide fast .
He went straight.
Snatched a glance behind. Figures moving in the distance, in the square. No one waving or shouting at him.
He fast-walked, passing more adobe and plaster, and saw on old man coming out, looking at him curiously.
Turned the bend and stopped suddenly.
Three armed men. Right in front of him.
Their AKs pointed at him.
Chapter Twenty-Five
They were bearded, like every other gunman he had encountered. No distinguishing features. Dark clothing, which seemed to be like a uniform.
‘Who are you?’ the one in the front asked, gutturally.
‘I am …’ Zeb stammered for effect, ‘With the storekeeper. I was looking for a place to urinate.’
‘What’s your name?’ Grim faces to match their voices. There was no one in the street behind them.
‘Rahman. Akmal Rahman. From Raghi.’
‘Why did you come so far?’
‘I am new. I thought there would be some clearing. Some open space …’
‘What’s happening?’ a voice growled. A man appeared from a house behind, took one look, and ducked back inside so fast that all Zeb could remember was a thick beard.
He returned, a shemagh covering his face. AK on his back.
He shouldered through the men, his eyes piercing.
They briefed him. He didn’t look at them. He had eyes only for Zeb.
‘Rahman?’ he said in an even voice, no inflection to it.
Zeb wanted to look at him fully, but that wasn’t what a scared villager would do.
‘Yes, agha,’ his voice quavered.
‘People die in Sori if they wander off.’
‘Agha,’ he trembled, ‘I was just looking to relieve myself.’
The interrogator’s hand rose swiftly. A Beretta at the end of it. Its barrel jammed against Zeb’s forehead.
‘Agha, please …’ Zeb pleaded.
A shout.
He didn’t dare turn.
Pounding feet.
‘He’s with me.’ Bidar appeared, hands folded in supplication, sweating, face flushed. ‘He must have strayed by mistake. Agha, please let him go.’
Fear in the storekeeper’s voice. ‘It will not happen again.’
No reaction from Shemagh.
Eyes drilling holes in Zeb.
A gunman coughed. That seemed to break the spell. The Beretta lowered.
‘Take him away. Make sure he behaves. Or you will suffer.’
‘Yes, agha,’ Bidar grabbed Zeb’s shoulder and swung him around, cursed at him loudly and shoved him towards the square.
‘Are the men following?’ Zeb whispered.
‘What?’ the storekeeper stopped mid-flow.
‘Those gunmen. Are they behind us?’
‘Yes,’ the grocer replied savagely. ‘Why did you come so far? I told you to find a wall. Not search the village!’
‘How can I let go against a house?’ Zeb replied angrily.
‘Like this,’ Bidar dragged him to the nearest house and relieved himself.
Zeb had no choice but to follow.
He kept his silence as the young man ranted and swore all the way back to the square.
Black eyes. Thick beard. A scar over right eyebrow? Sturdy shoes on his feet.
Zeb memorized every detail of Shemagh. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much to remember. His head had been bowed during most of the encounter.
‘Was that—’
‘Shut up,’ Bidar hissed and hurried to the stall.
They worked in silence when business picked up and when the afternoon lengthened, packed up and carried their goods back to the tractor.
More gunmen appeared and watched them. Fewer villagers turned out to help.
The sun was glowing orange by the time the storekeeper turned his tractor around and they commenced the perilous journey to the valley.
‘Were you scared?’
‘Yes,’ Zeb replied from atop the trailer.
Not really. Near-death isn’t new to me .
He had been readying to respond, back at the village. He had felt adrenaline flooding him, the familiar grey fog enveloping him.
That dude was too close.
He would’ve slapped the gun hand away, twisted Shemagh around and used him like a shield.
Overconfidence. They were complacent because they had numbers. That would’ve played to my advantage.
‘Was that Mohammed?’ he asked the grocer.
‘I don’t know,’ Bidar admitted. ‘He had his face covered. He was the same height and build but he has other men with him. It could have been anyone.’
‘Would he have killed me?’
‘I don’t know. I strayed once, when my father took me. Those Taliban fighters treated me the same way. That time, my father wasn’t around to save me. They let me go. Who knows what goes on in their minds?’
Zeb returned to Sori that night.
He jogged over the plains and fast-walked up the climb, taking a wide detour to avoid where he had come across Abdul and Nazir.
Alert for sentries and patrols.
He didn’t come across any.
It was a cloudy night. Windy.
While Bidar and he had been at Sori, Taliban fighters had killed several villagers in a hamlet near Keshem. They had raped a few women, too.
He and the grocer heard about it only when they returned to Raghi.
‘Mohammed’s men,’ an old-timer murmured.
Maybe that’s a message from the warlord. No patrol needed after such a savage act .
The weather suited him. He moved swiftly, barely making a whisper. He had climbing gear on his back and around his waist, along with his HK, Glocks, Nightvision, Benchmade, more gear in his backpack and pockets.
He took a breather after eight miles. Nothing human-like moved. Wind blew and rustled trees. Up ahead, he could see the paleness of the cliff rising from the surrounding darkness.
Indistinct shapes on top of it. Houses.
He set out again, more carefully, crawling where he needed to, because there was the possibility of sentries overlooking the valley.
It was one am when he reached the bottom of the cliff, a near-vertical rise that sprang off the slope.
The village extended to its edge and then drew back when the terrain became inhospitable.
Forty meters, just over a hundred and twenty feet.
If he took several steps back, he could just about make out the walls of the house, high above.
No patrols.
Otherwise they would have seen me. Riddled me with rounds.
He pulled out a customized pair of goggles from his backpack and donned them.
They magnified ambient light, bringing out the cliff’s surface in sharper relief. He could see cracks. Dark patches that indicated cavities.
He applied chalk to his hands.
Sprang up and began climbing, bare-fingered.
Following cracks where he could. Jamming his body into narrow openings, camming and using the increased leverage to move up.
Arm-bar and chicken-wing grips where needed.
The cliff wasn’t particularly difficult to navigate. It was the darkness he had to deal with. Each crack, each grip, had to be felt and gingerly tested, before he could commit himself.
He used momentum to swing, using the velocity to reach higher and grip.
Sweat streamed off his face, some of it slipping past the thick protection of his goggles and stinging his eyes.
He rested for a moment, letting his skeleton take his dead weight and brushed his forehead against his forearms. Not much sweat got wiped off, but it helped.
Zeb had incorporated bare-fingered climbing into his training routine several years back. He used it in missions, when appropriate. It generally was, because few hostiles expected an operative to come over a sheer cliff with nothing other than his bare hands.
Shoes were important. The ones he wore had rubber soles that stuck to the slightest uneven surface and held. Grips, full crimp, half crimp, open-hand, all those came naturally to him now, as he slithered over rock much like a lizard would.
Another break to sip water from a tube that was attached to the bottle strapped to his shoulder.
Rapid eye blinks to dislodge sweat.
A second to freeze when the HK clanked against rock.
No heads peered over the cliff, however. It was the dead of the night. The body’s rhythm was at its lowest.
At three am, he peered cautiously above the cliff edge.
The nearest house was ten feet away.
A dirt path skirted it and was right ahead. No lights. No voices.
He heaved himself over and ran to the house.
Leaned against it and breathed shallowly while the Earth slowed its rotation and he got his bearings back.
He was in Sori.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Getting off the ground was important, but Zeb first had to check out the three houses on the cliff’s edge.
And even before that, he had to establish a means of escape.
He looked around. Nothing came to mind.
Walked a few feet along the path and nearly tripped over something metallic.
He looked down.
A rusting, curved hook buried deep in the ground.
He frowned. Then his brow cleared.
To secure animals.
He removed his rope and tied one end to it.
Tossed the other end over the cliff.
His getaway route was established.
A murmur.
He dashed to the cover of the house and froze against its wall.
It came again. He listened carefully.
It seemed to come from within the house he was hiding against.
A window in the wall, further down.
He crept forward cautiously and snapped a quick glance.
Darkness inside.
His backpack had a cable camera that was Nightvision enabled.
He brought it out and attached one end of it to his phone. Snaked the other end up and through the hole in the wall and adjusted.
A greenish glow. Two yellow and orange blobs. Males.
One turned and murmured.
Talking in his sleep .
Zeb relaxed fractionally and checked out the rest of the house as well as he could.
Two rooms.
One room, in which the men slept, seemed to double as the living and bedroom.
The other could be the kitchen . His cable didn’t extend that far.
No other humans inside.
The two other houses on the cliff had a similar plan. One housed one male, another an old couple.
No Delta operatives. No Taliban, either.
He stuffed his equipment in a pocket.
Took a short run down the narrow path. Leveraged off the metal hook in the ground, grabbed the edge of a roof and scaled the house.
The roofs were inclined towards the cliff and slippery, but the rubber on his shoes was designed to grip even the smoothest surfaces.
Now that he was on top, Zeb saw that the roofs didn’t touch. There were several inches of gap, but from below, they gave the illusion of seamless cover.
Afghan villages don’t have such roofs. This is a Taliban modification to block aerial surveillance .
He leapt to the next house, got to his belly and crept to the edge. Craned his neck cautiously and searched in the darkness till he found a window.
The cable appeared and went into the opening.
No prisoners.
The next two houses yielded no result.
All its occupants were either elderly males or couples.
All the young have moved out of the village. Just the old left behind and the Taliban.
He came across the first sentries on the street where the gunmen had accosted him.
Three men, standing well away from one another.
One near the square, another in the middle, the last one at the end of the street, where the houses petered out.
They posed a problem.
He wanted to check out the house from which Shemagh had emerged.
He couldn’t thrust his head over the roof, however.
He tried to angle the cable down the roof and find the window.
All he saw was a blac
k opening and when he tried to use the cable, he felt resistance.
Of course! They have blocked the window so no one from the street can look inside .
He scurried to the sides. No openings.
There was a hole at the rear.
And three men sprawled on thin mattresses in the rear room.
All bearded. Weapons close by. One, at a distance. The other two, closer together.
That first dude … he’s Shemagh? Atash Mohammed?
Zeb couldn’t be sure. It was dark. The camera didn’t have that kind of resolution.
It didn’t look like there were any more occupants in the house. It had a still feeling to it, other than the sleeping occupants.
He rose to a cautious crouch. The house was surrounded by others at the sides and rear, with the street in front.
Is there a tunnel inside?
Or are the caves close by?
There was no way of knowing. He checked out the lane again.
The guards were where they were. No change.
He ran silently toward the square. Leapt across a narrow lane in which a man was standing, looking into the distance.
Zeb landed as softly as he could. Crawled back to the roof.
The terrorist hadn’t heard his movement.
He’s half-asleep. That’s why .
Zeb checked out that house. Gunmen inside, sleeping. No signs of any prisoners.
By four-thirty am, Zeb had checked out the majority of the houses in the village.
He had peered inside those in the densest part of Sori, where the guards were.
He hadn’t seen any sign of terrorists. No person bound or gagged. No cell-like room.
He stifled the bitterness rising in him.
It was still dark. He could go on, but his return would then be in danger.
It would be getting light. Anyone who stood on the cliff could see him.
He swallowed his disappointment, controlled the helplessness rising in him and ghosted towards the houses on the cliff.
One last check to see that the cliff lane was empty of hostiles.
It was.
He dropped lightly and retrieved the rope. Wrapped it around his waist, leaned over the cliff, gripped an outcrop and dropped down.
Going down was easier, even though it was just as dark.
Or maybe it just felt that way, because his mind was swirling. Thinking furiously.
Later, he blamed it on being distracted.
His HK slipped to his elbow and its sling got stuck in jutting rock.